[15-09-2018] Billeder af profeter og budskaber fra engle

[19-07-2018] Kalmar Gronvall interviews Christian Lindtner.

[14-06-2018] Christian 'Cross' - Buddhist 'Truth'

Good and pious Christians are expected to carry, show, and meditate on the cross associated with the Christ, his suffering, his release from suffering, and his so-called resurrection. To understand that in so doing they are actually offering worship to the Buddhist Noble Truth, they must first know the Greek term for a ‘cross’, viz, stauros. They must then know that each Greek name is also a number, and that the number of stauros is 1271 (s + t + a + u + r + o + s = 200 + 300 + 1 + 400 + 100 + 70 + 200 = 1271).
The next step is to draw 1271 as a circle, as a square, as an octagon, as a pentagram, as a triangle, etc., etc. The number 1271 is now represented as visual forms, often termed sacred geometry.
As for Buddhism, the same rules apply. Ancient Buddhism (Theravādo, rather than Theravāda) worships ariya-saccam, the number of which is 404 (1 + 100 + 10 + 10 + 1 + 200 + 1 + 20 + 20 + 1 + 40 = 404), of which there are four sorts (listed below).
Other schools, using Sanskrit, worship ārya-satyam, ‘Noble Truth’. The number of ā-r-y-a-s-a-t-y-a-m is 2 + 100 + 10 + 1 + 200 + 1 + 300 + 10 + 1 + 40 = 665.
Now draw stauros as a 1271 circle, and it will be seen that the four times ariyasaccam add up to ca. 1618, which is the cross consisting of four diameters, each of which represents one ariyasaccam. The number 1.6180339... is familiar to all as the value of the so-called Golden Ratio.
The fourth ariya-saccam is said to be the path leading to the end of suffering – in Pāli: dukkha-nirodha- gāminī patipad. When one counts, the number will be 1271, the same as stauros. This indicates that the stauros not only has to do with suffering, but also with the end of suffering.
Thus the Christian cross becomes a silent symbol of the ariya-saccam that is the path to the end of suffering. It makes sense that the cross is a symbol of suffering, but also of the cessation of suffering.
When one adds up the numbers of the four diameters of the circle and the cross, one lands on ca. 2888, which is the number of ‘The Kingdom of the Heavens’, ‘hê basileia tôn ouranôn’. To speak of the Kingdom of God, or of the Heavens is another way of speaking of the end of suffering.
Draw then the 665 circle of the Sanskrit synonym ārya-satyam. The six diameters, or two inscribed hexagons, add up to 1271 = stauros. Such six diameters can, of course, be drawn as four, so as to form a normal cross. One may now draw 1271 as an equilateral triangle inscribed in a 1536 circle.
In order to solve this puzzle, one must turn to The Lotus Gospel. There, in chapter XI, one will meet an old Buddha calling from inside a stūpa up in the air. This is the obvious source of the Messiah calling from the cross as reported by the New Testament Gospels. The crucifixion episode in the New Testament is a purely literary fabrication made up by combining words and events found in Buddhist and Jewish sources. Hence, it has nothing to do with history in the sense of what actually happened.
The name of this old Buddha is given as Prabhūta-ratnas, and his number is 1536. Thus the Greek stauros is related to Prabhūtaratnas. The 1271 stauros is seen as an equilateral triangle in the 1536 circle of Prabhūta-ratnas.
If one reads chapter XI of the Lotus, one will be able to make further observations leaving no doubt whatsoever about the Buddhist source.
Since Christians worship the man on the cross, they thus actually worship not only Prabhūta-ratnas, but also the legendary sage Gautama(s), said to be the founder of the Buddha’s royal dynasty. This fact was pointed out many years ago.
When drawn as a circle, the ca. 1271 stauros contains an inscribed octagon that is ca. 1236. If one multiplies 1236 by 1.618 x 1.618 x 1.618, one lands on the number 5236, which is the sum of the four sorts of ariya-saccam, as can be seen here:

Thus four sorts of ariyasaccam add up to 5234. If one reads patipadā for patipad, the number will be 5236, which, as said, is 1236 x 2.618 x 1.618.
Note that when one draws the 2670 (= 1546 + 1124) circle, then the inscribed pentagram will be 404.238 x 10, which thus confirms ariyasaccam. Note also that Buddhist scholars, failing to recognize the Greek geometry and syntax, have been puzzled by the apparently irregular forms samudayam and nirodham.

The fundamental concept of Theravādo is paticcasamuppādo = 1309. And four times 1309 is 5236. In John 14:6, Jesus identifies himself with these Buddhist concepts by saying that he is:hê hodos kai hê alêtheia kai hê zôê. The number of these eight words is precisely 1309. Thus, Jesus identifies himself with “Buddhism”, as defined by the familiar abstract concepts: the (Middle) Way, the (Noble) Truth, and the (Eternal) Life.
Has there ever been a single Christian in this world who did not set his hope on so-called resurrection?

The absurdities normally associated with physical – and even spiritual – resurrection are well known and need not be mentioned here. Who has ever noticed the dead getting up from their graves!
Now look at the numbers: the Number of hê anastasis, ‘the resurrection’, is 8 + 963 = 971. Now multiply 971 by 1.309 (one half of 2.618), and one will land on 1271 – stauros. In itself 971 is 6 x 161.83333..., and thus an obvious symbol of the Golden Ratio.
Look then at the number 1271, and ask why the ancients considered it so significant: The 1271 stauros is a word that refers to the mathematical fact that: 3 x 423.6666 = 1271. And 423.666 is 161.8 x 2.618… . In other words: ‘the worship of the Cross’ and ‘the worship of the Noble Truth, is the worship of what some modern scholars have called ‘the number of life’, the divina proportio, etc.
As mentioned above, the number of dukkham is 485. The Greek authors were aware of that, and must have chosen that term with 1271 in mind, for when one multiplies ca. 485 by 2.618…, one lands on 1271.
Even more sophisticated: There are eight “correct” views etc. The number of sammâ is 283. Since there are eight, we get 8 x 283 = 2264. Divide then 2264 by 1271, giving one 1.7812. If one reads that as 17-8-12, one will see that the 8 refers to the eight kinds of sammā. And that the 17-12 may be read as 1271, the number of stauros.
Note likewise that the number of dukkhasamudayam is 1142. Keeping the 1271 circle in mind, the inscribed square will be 1135 – NOT, as might be expected or hoped for, 1142. So 1142 is the “wrong number”; and thus becomes the origin of suffering!
Note also that when one adds 485 + 1142 + 720 + 1271 (above, defining ariyasaccam), one lands on 3618, which is 1618 plus 2000 (= 1618 x 1.236). One may also draw 485 + 720 as the 1205 square inscribed in the 1337.5 circle. If one then divides 1337.55 by 1.05236 (above, for Prabhūtaratnas, etc.), one will again land on exactly 1271.
When one multiplies 404.5, for ariyasaccam, by 1.2, one will again land on 485.4. But the number expected should be 485, the number of dukkham. So, dukkham obviously also has the meaning of “not quite accurate”.
The Pāli noun of truth is saccam; and the number of saccam is 282, or 283 (with the -a- before two consonants is taken as long by position; same rule applies above for ariyasaccam as 404 or 405, or 404.5.

The noun saccam was most probably coined in order to remind us of 282…, i.e. 2 x 141.4… Thus, 141.4213… is the radius in the 888 circle of Jesus, and in the 889 circle of Buddho Bhagavā. The 8 x sammā (= ca. 283 or 282.8) can now be seen as the eight diameters in the 888 / 889 circle.
According to modern scholarship, the ‘Buddha’ is a historical person who may have lived somewhere up in the mountains, long before Alexander the Great reached India. There are now two options: Either the ‘Buddha’ has nothing to do with ariyasaccam and āryasatyam. But how can one have a Buddha who had nothing to do with ariyasaccam, etc.! That would boil down to a Buddha without Buddhism!
There is an alternative. The analysis given above has pointed out that the authors of ariyasaccam / āryasatyam were highly competent scholars of Greek, Sanskrit and Pāli, but also experts in Greek geometry. In addition to that, the entire presentation of the Noble Truth is presented as a myth where gods, etc., play an important role.
Should any modern scholar insists on believing in a “historical Buddha”, he would also have to admit, that such an author of ariyasaccam / āryasatyam, was also a great expert of several languages, as well as Greek geometry.
Buddhist scholarship, ancient as well as modern, that ignores the Greek background is bound to get lost. The divina proportio is a profound principle, as the Lord admitted to himself in Mahāvaggo 1, 5, 2, etc.:adhigato kho myāyam dhammo gambhīro duddaso duranubodho santo panīto atakkācacaro nipuno panditavedanīyo.
Now read these words with Greek eyes so that adhigato gives one 389, etc. When one adds them all up, one will land on 6472, which is 4 x 1618.
The architects of the Parthenon have used the Golden Ratio long before its secrets were exported to India. Here, it ‘first became known as “the profound Dhammo” ’, etc.
Taken as a whole, the Mahāvaggo is a sort of ‘textual temple’. The idea that God expresses himself in numbers is typically Greek.

Biskopperne prætenderer at være de højeste autoriteter i åndelige anliggender.

De har dog intet at byde på.

[19-04-2018] Son of David in the Kapilavastu “Synagogue”

The Saṅgha-Bheda-Vastu (SBV) is a source of numerous passages in the Greek New Testament, and no serious scholar of Christianity can afford to ignore the SBV as well as other Buddhist sources in Sanskrit and Pāli. Already on the ﬁrst pages of the SBV we ﬁnd some of the sources not only of the episode Matthew 22:41-46, but also the clue to the real identity of the so-called “Matthew”, as well as the home of Jesus of Nazaret and Kapharnaoum. Here are the main points: The Lord is staying in Kapilavastu. The citizens of Kapilavastu have assembled in their “synagogue”. They ask themselves: “From where are we Śākyas born?” Unable to answer that question they turn to the Lord. He knows the answer, but not wishing to appear to be boasting of his own origin, he orders his disciple MahāMaudgalyāyanas, who has been sitting, meditating in the assembly, to tell the story. Any scholar who reads the Greek and the original Sanskrit aloud to himself, will have no problem in recognizing the Sanskrit behind the Greek. The Sanskrit begins with an absolute genitive: “While many citizens of Kapilavastu were gathered together in the synagogue”. The incident reported in Matthew 22:41-46 copies the absolute genitive: “While the Pharisees were gathered together”. Comment: The citizens of Kapilavastu have been transformed into the Pharisees. One has to go elsewhere to locate the “synagogue” of Kapharnaoum. Behind Kaphar-naoum we have Kapila-vastu. John 6:59 ... en sunagôgê ... en Kapharnaoum. These ten syllables are a direct rendering of the ten syllables at the very beginning of the SBV (p. 5) ... Kapilavastuni ... samsthāgāre. In the SBV, the citizens of Kapilavastu then ask the Lord about about what they have to answer in case someone asks them: ‘Kuto nirjātā bhavantaḥ Śākyāḥ?’ = ‘From where are you Śākyas born?’ In Matthew 22:42 these ten syllables are put into the mouth of the Lord, where the question now runs: ti humin dokei peri tou Khristou?; “What do you think about the Christ?” In the Sanskrit, the Lord will not answer the question, for the reason already given: He does not wish to boast about his own origin. It is up to “Matthew” to do so by relating the story now known as the Gospel according to Matthew. In the Greek it is the Pharisees who cannot answer the question, and the Lord, the Christ, who – for reasons not given – will not answer the question about origins! In other words: One must know the Sanskrit source in order to solve the puzzle in the Greek. This sort of puzzle occurs so frequently in the New Testament that it may be considered typical: Without the original Sanskrit or Pāli source, the sayings and parables of Jesus will remain mysteries. Matthew then puts words from the Old Testament in the mouth of the Lord. It is a paradox: How can the Christ be son as well as Lord in relation to David? The Pharisees cannot answer the question, and the reason is that they do not know gematria:
The number of Christ, Khristos is 1480. The number of son, huios is 680; and the number of kurios, Lord is 800. That Christ = 1480, here, shows that he is a good mathematician: huios + kurios = 1480 = Khristos. On the following page of the SBV (p. 6), the Lord then, as said, invites his disciple, MahāMaudgalyāyanas, who is sitting in the assembly, to raise and tell the story - the one we now primarily know from Matthew. The seven syllables of Ma-hā-Maud-gal-yā-ya-nas are then transformed into the seven syllables of Matthew 9:9: Maththaion legomenon. The nominative would be: Math-thai-os lego-me-nos, also seven syllables, as in the Sanskrit original. The disciple, who in the Sanskrit story was sitting in the very same assembly, has thus, in the Greek version, been transformed into a man sitting at the custom house. There is a hidden pun here, and you must know the Sanskrit original to notice it: This “Matthew” is, in Luke, described as a collector of taxes. These “taxes” he gathered from the Sanskrit of SBV, we now know! Once again, an instance of the general rule: If you do not know the Sanskrit, you will never really know that it is a Greek “pirate copy”. Later on Ma-hā-Maud-gal-yā-ya-nas tells us about the city (nagaram), of Kapilavastu. At one point, the Lord leaves the city, giving us the form: -nagarāt (‘from the city’). In Matthew, once again, a transformation takes place: Kapila-vastu becomes Kaphar-naoum (or, equally valid spelling: Kaper-naoum. The ablative form -nagarāt becomes Nazaret(h). At the end of the nouns, vastu and naoum are synonyms, meaning place. Thus one original location becomes two different locations in the ‘pirate copy’! If one takes the trouble to collect what the New Testament Gospels have to say about Kaphar-naoum and Nazaret(h) – again various spellings (all correct, we now see) – and then compares that with what the SBV and other Buddhist sources have to report about Kapilavastu-nagara(m/t/e), it will be quite obvious that the Greek, in all respects, is a pirate copy of the Sanskrit and Pāli. For instance, the incident about the centurion and his tortured boy (ho pais), reported in Matthew 8:5-13, can easily be traced back to the SBV (p. 196). It was originally the king of Kapilavastu and his boy – the so-called ‘Buddha’. Matthew 1:1 identiﬁes the Christ with the son of David. This refers to the Old Testament, of course, but also links up with the Sanskrit deva-putras, son of Deva(s). The noun devas also means ‘god’, and so Christ is not only ‘son of David’ but also of ‘God’. As usual, one must know the Sanskrit to avoid being confused. As the old Buddhist saying goes: It is easier for a camel, etc., than it is for a bishop to enter the New Testament without being competent in Sanskrit and Pāli. There is a common saying in the SBV that one becomes many, and that many becomes one. Without keeping this principle in mind, it is impossible to understand what went on in the mind of these unknown authors. The idea of one or many gods transforming themselves is very ancient among the Indians and the Greeks. From that point of view, there is nothing strange in, say, Buddho Bhagavā (whose number is 889) becoming transformed so as to turn up under the
name of Jesus, whose number is 888. Conclusion: Matthew is the ﬁrst book in the New Testament. Nothing is known about “Matthew” as a “historical person”. We now know why. His story started: Kapilavastuni . . . samsthāgāre, in the “synagogue” in Kapilavastu. Monks – Buddhist and Christian – are still making a modest living by showing Kapilavastu and Kapharnaoum and Nazaret(h) to naïve tourists. But – bad luck – none of these places were ever on the map. They are, just as the euaggelion (= sūtram) as a whole, the product of pia fraus. Note: In this paper I have ignored the gematria common to the Sanskrit and the Greek. For instance, John 6:59 describes the Lord as teaching (didaskôn) in the Kapharnaoum synagogue. The numerical value of didaskôn is 1089. In the Sanskrit, the Lord is Buddhas + Bhagavān = 612 + 459, adding up to 1071. Draw the 1089 circle of didaskôn, and the inscribed decagon will be found to be 1071. The teacher in question, is of course, the Messias, whose number is ‘ho Messias’ = 726. But 726 is the ‘ﬁsh’ in the 1089 circle of didaskôn (= 1089). (726 is 2/3 of 1089). Another nice example: John 1:1-18 consists of exactly 496 syllables, corresponding to the number of the epithet monogenês, mentioned here in this textual unit. Now let 496 be the ‘ﬁsh’ in the 744 circle. Double up, and you land on the Sanskrit bodhisattvas = 1488. There are, as can be seen, many puns on bodhi-sattvas in the New Testament. That “John” was a true master of numerology (sacred geometry) has been ﬁrmly established by numerous other examples. The serious study of the New Testament MUST thus combine at least three (now and then four or ﬁve) ancient languages on a common geometrical basis, viz., Greek geometry. Otherwise, all one’s endeavours to come to terms with the foundations of Christianity will be in vain.

[22-05-2017] UBI EST CHRISTUS?

Theologians make a living - with a few honorable exceptions - by telling stories about persons who never existed, and about events that never took place.
Bishops, in particular, enjoy a cosy life by having their pastors fleece the guillible sheep. Unfortunately they are seldom held to account for their wickedness. One of their tales wants us to know that Christ somehow went up to heaven, and is now still sitting up there on the right hand of his father, surrounded by his gang of disciples.
The simple question they have to answer, is: Where, quite precisely, is he now sitting, or, perhaps, standing? This question was posted to all Danish bishops in April 2017 by Dr.Lindtner in several Danish newspapers.
None of the ten Danish bishops - all Lutheran - have been able to answer this simple question, in Danish: Hvor sidder Kristus? In Latin: Ubi est Christus?
The Danish church defines its bishops as experts in matters of Christ. In this case they demonstrated their expertise in ignorance and silence. A few common Christians came up with suggestions: He is sitting in my heart! The problem with this answer is that these hearts must then be up somewhere in the sky, and, apart from that, Christian monotheism has suddenly turned into polytheism.
Now we have as many Christs as we have human hearts!
Some found that the question should not be answered, for it was balsphemous. The best reply was, perhaps: In the middle of Nowhere!
But where is Nowhere? Next time you are invited to recite the Apostles´s Creed, you may want to ask this question to your local shepherd, too.
Will he be one of the few honest pastors who admits that the Creed was never intended to be taken serious? Will he know that it has Buddhist sources?

[20-05-2017] Buddhist Monuments of King Harald: Aggersborg & Jelling.

The monuments of King Harald to be seen in Jelling and Aggersborg may be taken as an attempt to promote the Anuttram. Dharmacakram first turned by Tathâgato, and, after him, by Sâriputto. First, take a look at the ring fortress of Aggersborg.

Aggersborg, Northern Jutland

There are three circles. The diameters are 240, 264 and 288 meters, respectively. Starting with the outer circle, one gets a 904,32 circle, or wheel, with an inscribed cross = 576. The image as a whole thus adds up to 1480,32. Here, 1480 is the number of Khristos.
In Sanskrit 1481 is the number of the statement: asti madhyamâ pratipat: It is the Middle Path. The number 576 is confirmed by looking at Jelling, where the long diagonal in the 1440 (= 4 x 360) rhombus is 576 meters.

Jelling seen from above

Thus 576 = 2 x 288 = the cross in Aggersborg. Now 1440 is the octagon in the 1480 circle of Khristos. The number 1440 confirms the identity: ekei ho Messias ho Emmanouêl = 1440. The diameter of the inner Aggersborg circle is 240, which gives the 753,6 circle. This circle along with the inscribed cross thus adds up to 1233,6. But 1233 is 656 for Messias, and either 576 for pneuma, or for the Greek euaggeliuon = 577.
The middle circle in Aggersborg has the 264 diameter; the circumference is thus 828,96. The circle and the cross is thus 1356,96. Inscribed in this circle you will find the ca. 686 equilateral triangle = 686. But 686 is the number of Tathâgato (in Pâli), and of Aryan Truths, âryasatyâni in Sanskrit.
In the Sanskrit tradition it is said that there are four equilateral triangles having twelve points. That adds up to 1443 for triparivartam, and 777 for dvâdâkâram. This is said of the Dharmayam Dharmacakram = 524. Add you, and you get 524 + 1443 + 777 = 2744. And 2744 is 4 x 686. the Four Aryan Truths inscribed - following the Sanskrit perfectly. So, here, the 264 diamter in the 828,96 circle provides us with a complete image of the Buddhist Wheel of Dharm(s).-
The purpose of following the Buddhist Path is to attain peace of mind, in Pâli upasamo, the number of which is 792.
But 792 is the number obtained by adding the three Aggersborg diameters: 240+264+288.
The Pâli says: ayam eva ariyo atthangiko maggo = 1521: This is the Aryan eightfold Path.
But 1480, above, is the octagon inscribed in the 1521 circle.
These and numerous simlilar observations to the very same effect go to show that the monuments of Harald can only be properly understood provided you start out with the Buddhist Wheel of Dharma.
In Sanskrit, it is called Anuttaram Dharmacakram = 1521. Once you have the numbers of these circles etc., you will also have the numbers of the inscribed polygons, etc. Once you have these numbers, you should compare them with the corresponding numbers of basic concepts in Pâli as well as in Sanskrit.
You will see that the intention of Harald - or his architects - was to export the Dharmacakram to Danish soil.
According to the Buddhist myth, the Anuttaram Dhammacakkam (Pâli) was first promoted in Benares, more precisely: Bârânasiyam Isipatane Migadâye = 418+657+75 = 1150.
That location corresponds to the square formed by the four ca. 288 diameters of Aggersborg.
The precise figure will then be 287,5 meters times four = 1150.
The number is perfect, for there must be a narrow path for you to walk on when you visit Aggersborg. -Now return to Jelling and take a look at the Pantokrator on the rune stone.

Jelling Runestone

The span of his arms from fingertip to fingertip is exactly 110 or 110,5 cm.
Multiply that figure by PI = 3,14.., and you land on precisely 346.
And as all Buddhists must know, 346 is the number for " Buddhism", viz.:
dharmas = 346; mârgas = 346; ariyo dhammo = 346.
There can thus hardly be any doubt that the figure on the runestone has a simple message for all educated vistors to Jelling: He is Khristos = 1480, and that figure, confirmed over and over, also implies the number 1421:
This is the Aryan eightfold Path!
Welcome to the introduction of the Anuttaram Dharmacakram in Denmark.
That is how it started, but did not last for long. After a few decades all the monuments of Harald were forgotten.
Thanks to the Buddhist sources, we may now begin to understand what King Harald was actually up to.
The lion on the runestone surely reminds us of the four Macedonian lions of King Asoka!
Finally, the circle with the 2 x 264 cross = 1356,96 cannot fail to remind us of:
aruyo atthangiko maggo = 1063, plus 294 for ekklêsia = 1357. And, again, 1357 is kathêgêtês kurios. 1357 also says: I belong to God: egô eimi theou. Or it says: Look, I am (viz. here in Aggersborg).

[20-05-2017] SAINT PETER'S WHEEL AND STÛPA IN ROME

The most famous of all churches dedicated to Sâri-Putto, or Sâri-Putras, is, of course the one in Rome. Misleadingly, it is better known as Saint Peter's Church, and the "square" is more like a circle or wheel: to be quite precise, it is the Buddhist Dharma-cakram (in Pâli Dhamma-cakkam). The eight radii are obvious. It represents the Aryan eightfold Way.

All Buddhists know what all Christians seem not to know: The Buddhist legend has it that all seven Buddhas "turned" the Dharma-cakram. When the last one, called Sâkyamuni, was about to pass away, he appointed Sâri-putto to be his Dharma general. Sâri-putto had been reborn many times, and he would be reborn once again to promote the Dharma-cakram in foreign countries.
This myth is found in several Buddhist texts, beginning probably with Sutta-Nipâta, v. 557: "Sâri-putto, following (me) Tathâgato, will keep the Unsurpassed Dharma-wheel rolling, that has been set rolling by me." When the time was ripe, Sâri-putto was, as predicted, reborn as the first bishop of Rome, and as the first pope in a long line, now represented by Francis, a sort of SP redivivus. If you take the trouble - as all honest Buddhists and Christians should do - to compare what Buddhist gospels have to say about Sâri-putto with what the Christian gospels have to say about Simôn Petros, you can only arrive at the conclusion that the Christian SP is no other than the Buddhist SP in disguise, a very typical disguise.
SP plays the same role as the first disciple of the Lord in both traditions. The main canonical source of Rome's presumptuous authority is, as we all know, Matthew 16, 13-20. Here, Messias calls him Bar-Iônas. which is a translation of what SP is called in Mahâyâna, viz. Jina-putras, son of Jinas (= Buddhas = Messias).
The Aramaic bar translates the Sanskrit putras; and Iônas contains the pun on Jinas. SP is also called kumâra-bhûtas, where kumâras is "prince", and -bhûtas means "is", or has become", or the like. That is why Messias says: su ei, you are; and when he calls him blesssed, the Greek MaKaRioS renders the Sanskkrit KuMâRaS in a typical fashion. He is also called Kêphas, and said to be the "rock", or petra, of the church. Hence the church of SP in Rome.
But here you have to know geometry to solve the puzzle: The number of Kêphas is 729, and when you draw a circle with 729 as the circumference, the "fish" will be 486, the number of the Greek petra, which at the same time contains a pun on PuTRaS and on PeTRoS. The square in the 729 circle is 656, which is the number of Messias. The diameter in the 729 circle is 232,1656, and six diameters thus add up to 1393, which is, indeed the number of Sâri-Putras (= 200+2+100+10+80+300+100+1+200). The eight diameters add up to 1855, which is the number of Simôn Petros = 1100+755 = 1855.
SP is known as a presbuteros, and elder, translating sthaviras in Sanskrit; and thero in Pâli. The number of presbuteros is 1462, but the number of his name in Pâli, viz. Sâri-Putto is also 1462 (=200+2+100+10+80+400+300+300+70). When the six diameters are nicely drawn in the 729 circle of Kêphas, you see a dodecagon. It measures 721, which is the number of Tisyas, one of the most common names of SP in Buddhism.
In Buddhist gospels it is repeatedly said that SP will be reborn and "turn" the Dharmacakram with its four diameters. So the ancient Buddhist prophecy finally became true. What you see when you visit the great church of Saint Peter in Rome is a stûpa dedicated to Saint Putto, and what you see in from of that stûpa is, as expected, the Dhamma-cakram, or Dhamma-cakkam.
If you enter the SP stûpa, you may, if you are lucky, meet the most recent incarnation of SP - Pope Francis. With some luck this friendly chap may take you down underground where he will show you, what "is said to be" the tomb of Saint Peter.
In a way, he is, of course, not being dishonest. The tomb is identified as such with typical Buddhist irony. It, too, belongs to a large picture of deceit. SP has, in Sanskrit and Pâli, many other epithets or surnames. All of them turn up in Christian tradition. In a few cases the identification is tricky. Thus Kêphas was originally KâSyaPaS, another famous disciple. As the Buddhist saying goes: One becomes many, and many become one.
The church, the circular square and the tomb thus serve as a splendid but also silent monumnet in memory of the first disciple of Buddha, or Tathâgato.
But what about the Christian faith? Does it also have Buddhist roots? To answer that question, one needs to have a look at the Apostle's Creed, also known as the Symbolon Apostolicum. In its earliest Roman form it consists of 12 brief statements, each of which is ascribed to one of the twelve disciples.
Any modern Buddhist taking an interest in his own scriptures can identify these twelve: The first is Simôn Petros, originally Sâri-Putto. The second is Andreas, originally Aniruddhas. The third is ´Iakôbos, originally Kâsyapas. The fourth is ´Iôannês, originally Ânandas. The fifth is Thômas, originally Tamas (in anya-tamas, meaninig twin, another), etc. etc. Their confession has three parts. The first deals with the Father, i.e. Buddha or Tathâgato. The second part deals with his son - the Jina-putras. The third deals with the samgha, the church, the congregation of holy men, i.e. bodhisattvas etc. These are known as the Three Jewels among Buddhists.
Christians refer to them as a unit, called Trinitas, with a pun on Sanskrit tri-ratnas. Petros, i.e., Putras, is the first to speak, and what he says about his "father" can be traced right back to what is said about Brahmâ and about Tathâgato in the early Brahmajâlasuttam. Here, God, the Great God, identifies himself in the typical NT way beginning with an " I am", (egô eimi):aham asmi Brahmâ... vassavatî... issaro kattâ pitâ bhûtabhavyânam... (The full text published e.g. in A.K.Warder, Introduction to Pâli, London 1984, p. 198.).
This definition of God as Almighty, Father, etc. is lifted by "Peter" from a famous Buddhist euaggelion, or sûtram. When it finally comes to the Christrian sacraments, baptism, the eucharist, confession of sins etc. - these are all well known from the Buddhist gospels of Mahâyâna. And so, I invite all serious Buddhists around the world, to brush up their Sanskrit and Pâli, and then to study sufficient Latin and Greek, so that the Buddhist sources of Christianity can be fully identified. The conclusion can only be that Christianity is a Mahâyâna sect inteded for the West. The meaning or the Secret of the identity of Christ and SP as found in Matthew 16, 13-20 should thus be obvious.

[19-04-2017] "Resurrection cancelled!"

...says science journalist Lone Frank in Copenhagen church. Outraged Lutheran wizards deeply offended. Bad news for good business. "Resurrection of Jesus is a FACT that cannot be discussed", howls wizard Lilleør.Irrefutable proof of resurrection of Jesus is provided by Paul, 1 Cor. 15, says grand wizard Troels Engberg-Pedersen - ignoring the Buddhist source about the "more than 500 brothers", etc., pointed out by Chr. Lindtner long ago and known to all Danish theologians.

[15-04-2017] Jesus on the coins of his Dad

Jesus Christ (JC) is, as we must learn to understand, one of the numerous mythical sons of God, who likes to puzzle and tease all those who believe that they believe in him. To solve his puzzles you must, as a rule, know not only Greek, but also Latin, Sanskrit and Pâli, as well as a bit of mathematics and numismatics.
How come JC is said to sit or stand at the right hand of his Father?
How come JC says that his Father is sitting on a throne up there somewhere in the sky, a location that has never been identified by modern astronomers?
How come JC, a Galilean, compares himself to a hen, in Greek: ornis, in Latin: gallina?
How come JC takes an interest in the image of a ruler on a coin?
Why do the soldiers, who mock JC, place a rod in his right hand and call him king of the Jews?
To answer these questions, or to crack the code, you merely need to have a look at one of the most common coins from the Hellenistic period, shown here:

Greek God became Jewish God

What you see here is the Father of all men and gods, as Homer says, and as all Greek and Romans knew for sure.
What you see in the right hand of Zeus is supposed to be an eagle, but it takes only a bit of imagination to take the bird as being a hen. On some of the coins, it even seems to have laid an egg!
So what the enthroned Father of men and gods is holding in his right hand is simply the Galilean Gallina, i.e. one of his many sons.
The simplest explanation for the rod in the right hand of JC is that it was the famous scepter of Zeus, who, on the coins, holds it in his left hand. The scepter, an old symbol of monarchy, is now handed over to the king of the Jews, who holds it in his right hand. Thus it makes perfect sense when JC is said to be son of God, for, as all Greeks know, all kings - including the one of Israel or of the Jews - are sons of Zeus. And as such Zeus is enthroned somewhere up there in the sky.
The Lord's prayer is a prayer to Zeus, who, also according to old Homer, has his abode in the sky.
Naturally, his name must be "holy", which means that the name of Zeus, his father, must never be mentioned! The true ID of JC is a secret, just as the true name of his Father, i.e. Zeus, must be kept secret!
Of course, if you ask your local pastor or bishop, he will tell you that you need not know a word of Greek or Latin, and certainly not Pâli and Sanskrit, in order to make sense of the "Word of God", or of the so-called "Gospel". No bishop will admit the simple truth that the Greek word for Gospel, euaggelion, is a simple translation of the Sanskrit synonym sûtram.
Very often, JC likes to tease his opponents by inviting them to solve a mathematical paradox.
Thus, in a famous incident, he asks his opponents how it can be that Christ is, at the same time a son and a lord, i.e. younger and older in relation to king David. (See Matthew 22, 41-46, and my paper in Brahmavidyâ 78-79, pp. 47-157 for many more examples of Jesus as a mathematician.)
They cannot solve the puzzle because they know nothing about numbers.
The simple solution is: Khristos is 1480, and the sum of Son, huios, and Lord, kurios, is 680+800 = 1480.
So, these idiots don´t even know that 1480 is 800 + 680!

There is, in the body of the Greek text of the NT, almost no end to such paradoxes and puzzles posed by the words of JC.
But, as said, without the Greek, Latin, Pâli and Sanskrit etc., you are bound to be lost, exactly as were the Pharisees in Matthew 22, 41-46.
Luther and his modern followers claim to be true to the word of God as found in the Gospel translated into modern languages.
Luther was wrong, and so are bishops who not only deny that euaggelion translates sûtram, but who also claim that the New Testament has nothing to do with numbers or geometry. They are, in other words, exactly like those poor Pharisees, who were not able to say a word in reply to JC.
One of the most striking characteristics of Zeus is that he can undergo transformations, and the same applies to his numerous sons, many of whom were kings. And so, to sum up, a look at the famous coin provides us with the main source of the fable of the transformation of a Galilean Hen who eventually became the king of the Jews. Keeping this transformation in mind, it also becomes evident why JC claims that he and his father are one. And, since a father comes before a son, it is Zeus who becomes the father of JC, not vice versa.

[26-12-2016] It is easier for a Camel than it is for a Bishop...

It is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle, than it is for a bishop to be honest about the Christmas hoax. How can a Jewish king, who never even existed, have been born by a virgin!

It is easier for a turtle to thrust its neck through the hole of a yoke flowing on the ocean, than it is for a pope to reveal the Buddhist sources of the Mass mysteriously celebrated on Christmas Eve.

It is easier for the son of a barren woman to marry his own daugther and have twelve children with her, than it is for a Dalai Lama to make much sense of the Dharma, if he does not know Greek. For how can he explain Tathâgatas if he is ignorant of a kaloskagathos or a kathêgêtês!

It is easier for a man to catch his own shadow, than it is for a scholar to grasp the New Testament, if he is ignorant of Sanskrit and Pâli.

It is easier for water to run upwards, than it is for anyone to understand the puzzle of the Son of Man, if he has never studied Euclid.

It is easier for two to be four, than it is for anyone to explain why Christians worldwide would worship a god willing to sacrifice his own innocent son in order to please a gang of revengeful Jews calling for his blood.

It is easier to calculate the number of grains of sand in the Nile, than it is to figure out why a Dalai Lama lets a pope get away with pretending to be the legitimate successor of Sâriputras (widely known as Simon Peter, first fake bishop of Rome).

Is it not easier for all our priests to walk on water, than it is for a decent individual - a kaloskagathos - to applaud the meretricious gaudiness of Rome!

It is easy to figure out why Lutherans are busy celebrating the so-called Reformation of a brave and brutal German run-away monk. Luther enabled them to make an easy life merely by fooling the gullible masses for half a millennium with advanced Buddhist fairy tales about an imaginary Buddha who was reborn out of love for his people.

Phony Sâri-putras begging Buddhas to keep the secret by blessing the poor in spirit.

[30-10-2016] Christ's Burial Place - a Buddhist stûpas

A few days ago, National Geographic created headlines worldwide by posting a bit of "sensational" false news: Christ's Burial Place Exposed for First Time in Centuries!
Correctly, National Geographic informs us that the tomb chamber has served as a focalpoint of veneration since it was first identified by Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, in A.D. 326.
What the reader is not informed about is the fact that for centuries Greek, Roman and Buddhist priests had identified numerous locations where their gods and saints had been born, worked miracles, passed away etc. - often in different places at the same time. Helena was thus just repeating an old story, pouring new wine on old bottles.
The list of pious frauds knows no end. Students familiar with the Lotus Gospel know how to set the record straight: When a Buddha, a so-called Tathâgatas, passes away, a stupas is typically erected for worship in his memory. He and his gospel is then considered to be contained in such a stûpas. Hence its worship.
One must know the Greek term for the grave or tomb of Jesus - taphos. The Greek taphos renders the Sanskrit stûpas. As always one must know gematria to solve the puzzle precisely. The number of stûpas is 200+300+400+80+1+200 = 1181, which then is translated into Greek: ekei ho taphos = 40+70+½071 = 1181. The Greek means: Here is the grave. The Greek thus points to the Sanskrit stûpas. But only a Buddhist would know the trick!
When you read what the Lotus Gospel and the MPS write about Tathâgatas, his passing away, and his body, bones or ashes being located in a stûpas, it becomes obvious that the Christian cult of Jesus in the taphos is but an echo of the Buddhist ritual. For obvious reasons a stûpas is often empty.
There is no Tathâgtas in there! But that does not really matter. The important thing is that you worship the stûpas in faith as a sort of symbol of the teacher and his teachings. The Christian worship of the empty taphos is thus a typical example of the Buddhist worship of an empty stûpas.
But would Buddhist missionaries really be willing to play such tricks? According to their own words, they most certainly would. When you study the Buddhist sources of the Eucharist, you cannot fail to see that here, too, we are dealing with a sort of secret worship of the Buddhist hero, the Tathâgatas. The point of the Eucharist is to make you "eat and drink" - i.e absorb the Lord and his teaching so that it all becomes a part of yourself. These tricky Buddhists even have a technical term for this sort of hidden propaganda - "skill in means".

[29-10-2016] ODD GALILAEAN REPLACES OLD BUDDHA

Jesus, according to Mark 11,12-14, cursed a completely innocent fig tree - a sukê in Greek. But why? Failing to go ad fontes, New Testament scholars have offered various subjective speculations to explain the plain absurdity.
Matthew 11,18 brings us a bit closer to the solution of the puzzle, when he refers to the fig tree as a sukên mian, in the accusative case. We come even closer, when we read about another tree, a suka-minos, a mulberry tree. If you have faith, you can order it to pull itself up by its roots and plant itself in the sea. This is Luke 17,6. Again, poor tree! The fig tree and the mulberry tree now belong to the past!
Students familiar with the Lotus Gospel have no problem when it comes to the correct solution of the absurd story. In the Lotus Gospel we learn of the old Buddha called Sâkya-munis, now about to pass away and to be replaced by a new Buddha.
In Buddhists gospels, the rareness of their appearance is often compared to that of the rareness of a flower on a fig tree. So, here we have the fig tree once again combined with (a) Buddha. The Sanskrit for this fig tree is udumbaras. So, obviously, the sukên mian as well as the suka-minos are to be taken as puns on the original Sanskrit: Sâya-munis. Jesus is, here as always, a new Buddha who replaces the old one.
The belief that if you have faith, then you can even move mountains, is also typical Buddhist. See my essay "Faith as Small (or as Big) as a Mustard Seed", reprinted in Michael Lockwood, Mythicism, p. 116, where the Sanskrit sources are given.
Once you know what to look for, you will also be able to trace the udumbaras behind the words ascribed to Jesus, the new Buddha who replaced the most famous of the old ones.
New Testament scholarship that ignores Sanskrit and Pâli sources can, I fear, be expected one day to share the sad fate of the fig and the mulberry tree! Nor must the geometry always involved be ignored. In this case the first question is: What is the geometry behind the transformation from Sâkyamunis to sukê mia?
The second question is: What is the geometry accounting for Sâkya-munis turning up as Suka-minos? Here, as usual, whoever has intelligence, must figure out the number of the beast!

[17-09-2016] Chr. Lindtner and dr. Robert M. Price in a conversation about fairy tales and fables common to Buddhism and Christianity on Radio Lindtner.

The most holy of all Christian sacraments is certainly that of the Eucharist, also known as the Lord's Supper, or the Last Supper.
Surrounded by his disciples, Jesus offered them his blood to drink and his body to eat. They still do so, mainly on Sundays.
In order to make some sort of sense of this absurd nonsense all sorts of suggestions have been offered. Wrong options have cost innumerable lives that could have been saved by going to the Buddhist sources, the most important of which is found in Sanskrit.
Lord Buddha, who typically refers to himself as Tathâgata(s) is surrounded by his disciples, and this is their last meal together. Soon, he will pass away.
Here is what Tathâgatas said to his closest disciples (MPS 42,10):

But this is only the first part of the story. In this Buddhist source there is no mention of shedding blood. Now, all Buddhists are familiar with the idea that in a previous life, before being reborn as a real Buddha, he sacrificed himself for the benefit of other living creatures.
For instance, he cut off his arm and gave it to a hungry tigress who then gave it to her hungry cub. By drinking the blood and by eating the flesh the cub survived. This well-known Buddhist fable, or Jâtrakam, is the source of the New Testament fable about Jesus shedding his blood for many (Matthew 26,28 par) and even giving up his life for the world on the cross.
Thus two different Buddhist sources have been combined and Buddha has been reborn once again now under a new name. The story will repeat itself. In reality he will never die; he will be back to enjoy eternal life along with his closest disciples.

Commentary:
Tathâgatas invites his disciple - twice - to have a careful look at his body. Why? Because such a Buddha only occurs very rarely - like the flower on a fig-tree.
In the mad Christian copy, the disciples are invited to eat and drink the Tathâgatas! The flower of the Udumbaras is changed into the fruit of the vine. Thus the point about the rareness is almost lost.
When you compare the Sanskrit and the Greek words, you will hear typical puns:Ta-thâ-ga-tas-ya becomes tês di-a-thê-kês, etc.
To spell that out:
Buddhists are invited to think of the Buddha who appears in this world so rarely.
Christian readers are invited to swallow Tathâgatas completely - blood as well as flesh. Originally, it was the hungry cub that did so in order to survive. The cub has been transformed into a Christian carnival, as it were.
The purpose of participating in the Holy Supper is thus clear: You must become a Buddhist - without the Christian priest telling you the deeper meaning of this profound mystery. It makes some sense if you imagine yourself to be a hungry cub.
The Pope has the bad habit of speaking of a profound mystery of transfiguration.
Well, had he been a bit more honest, he would have told you that what is actually at stake, is a rather typical case of mysterious Buddhist translations.
That a Pope promotes Buddhism is to be expected, once you recall that Simôn Peter is just Sâri-Putras in disguise. Buddhist monks will tell many stories about the rebirths of Sâri-Putras. Most famous is his rebirth as the first bishop of Rome.
It goes without saying that the Buddhist and the Christian episodes must be seen in the original textual context.
If you do so, you will find that similar events occur in both sources.
So, as usual, we are dealing with pirate copies.
The unknown Buddhist authors of the Eucharist achieved what they wished to achieve: Their intention was to convert "the entire world" to Buddhism - without them knowing it.
They did quite well.
In Mahâyâna there is something called skill in means, upâya-kausalyam. It has to do with hidden propaganda.
The Eucharist provides the most splendid example of this sort of Buddhist propaganda.

Buddhas bloody body served by John Huss and Martin Luther - little did they know! Engraving from the second quarter of the 16th century.

[19-08-2016] Chr. Lindtner in a candid conversation with Kenneth Humphreys, author of Jesus Never Existed. On myths and deceptions of professional theologians, and their ignorance of sacred geometry and the Buddhist sources of the New Testament.

[13-07-2016] New light on early Christianity in Denmark. King Harald's Christ was both name and number, as in the New Testament. No silly Lutheran belief in a historical Christ at all.

Link to article in Vejle Amts Folkeblad, click picture below.

Christian Lindtner and Niels Bandholm in front of a copy of king Harald Bluetooth's runestone. Jelling, 2016.

[20-02-2016] THE SANSKRIT KID IN THE LOTUS MANGER

It is about time that good Christians started asking themselves and their brothers, why their pastors and bishops do not want to learn Sanskrit, and why Sanskrit is being expelled from European universities that used to have a glorious tradition of Sanskrit and Buddhist studies. How can that be? Why are they afraid of Sanskrit?? I have asked the Copenhagen bishop, to be sure, and his reply was that he had no time to look at the Buddhists sources of the New Testament, and certainly no time for Sanskrit! I have asked countless professors of the New Testament, and precisely a year ago, Århus professor of theology Anders-Christian Jacobsen made his position clear: "I will not learn Sanskrit!" Are they just lazy? Perhaps so. But there is much more at stake: Their daily bread.
So, good Christians should start asking serious questions, just little ones for a start. For instance: How can it be that the mother "in those days" placed the little boy (Greek: to paidion) in a "manger". To answer the puzzle you must know the Greek and the Sanskrit, and then compare the two.
As all Buddhists know the proper place for a Buddha and a Bodhisattva is in or on a Lotus. The Sanskrit for "in a Lotus" is pad-me, the locative form of padmam, a lotus. In Greek, the bo-dhi-sat-tvam becomes the little boy: to pai-di-on. The Sanskrit -sat-tvam means "be-ing". That becomes to...on, meaning in Greek: be-ing. Next, the bo-dhi becomes pai-di. Thus, bo-dhi-sat-tvam has changed into to pai-di-on. He has been reborn! Ask your local pastor to think it over, or take a chat with the bishop! But the manger, please!
Well, the Greek says "in a manger", en phat-nê. So, again, a locative form. Just as you can hear, how bo-dhi becomes pai-di, thus you can also hear, how pad-me becomes phat-nê. And there are hundreds of similar examples of the same sort. One or two examples prove nothing, but hundreds do. When you read the Lotus Sûtram, even in a modern translation, you will find that the Lotus, i.e. the Buddha, orders his disciples and missionaries to spread the Lotus all over the world by means of puns and plays on words of the sort given here.
Just to listen to the sound of a Lotus is sufficient, he assures us. The idea is - as all Japanese Buddhists will agree - that merely by hearing and reciting the sound of pad-me and of bo-dhi, you will achieve the greatest happiness in the world. That is why Loukas writes phat-nê and pai-di. But it will not work in a modern translation, where all is lost! Hence, good Christians must take up a bit of Greek and Sanskrit! - if they want to follow in the steps their Saviour.
The evangelist called Luke shared this conviction and followed orders when "translating" into Greek. His name, in Greek, is Loukas, an echo or pun on the Sanskrit original: Lokas, meaning "world". When you have come that far, you may ask for a solution to the old paradox of bo-dhi-sat-tvam (accusative case of bo-dhi-sat-tvas) having been born of a virgin.
Here, again, you must first pick up a bit more of Greek and Sanskrit, and then compare. The Greek for "virgin" is PaRTHeNos. In Sanskrit there are many synonyms for Lotus apart from padmam. One of these is PuNDaRîka-, as in the very title of the Saddharma-pundarîka-sûtram - the Lotus. To be born from a virgin is in Greek: ek parthenou (genitive of parthenos). Behind eKPaRTHeNou you hear, exactly as above, PuNDaRîKa. That, again, solves the old puzzle about the number of man - i.e. Buddha aka Jesus - being 666: Thus the number of p-u-n-d-a-r-î-k-a = 80+400+50+4+1+100+10+20+1 = 666. This means, of course, that the son of the virgin is to be found in the Lotus, and in that sense the apparent paradox of parthenogenesis proves to be perfectly true: The Lord is born in a Lotus. So, should you find any modern rationalist ridiculing the notion of parthenogenesis, it may well be that he is just as ignorant of Greek, Sanskrit, maths and comparative Gospel studies as the average pope and bishop.

I remain perpetually astonished. Thanks for this!

Robert M. Price

[17-02-2016] The Purpose of the Church of Denmark

In the well-considered view of Anders Sandøe Ørsted, the main pupose of the Church of Denmark, was, as this great man wrote in his autobiograhy: "to serve the enlightenment and ennoblement of the souls of Denmark's youth."
Now what a contrast to the misery, ignorance and vulgarity that haunts the current state of the Lutheran Church of our old kingdom! Who has not heard tags like "spaghetti service" and refrains of "equality and equal rights and love", oozing from the lips of the white clerical slime - but antiquated words like enlightenment and, worst of all, if you will excuse the term, "ennoblement" who has ever heard - if only by way of rumour - of such an out-of-place gospel shedding its light from a modernizing church?

[06-02-2016] JESUS wants YOU to carry the Lotus Sutra!

Jesus says: "And whoever does not take his CROSS (Greek : STauRoN) and follow after me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10,38). And according to Luke 14,27, he said: "Whoever does not carry his own CROSS (Greek: STauRoN) and come after me cannot be my disciple." So the message is clear enough: To be a true disciple of Jesus, you must carry your STauRoN.
Accordingly, some Christians are still seen to carry a cross around their neck, in Denmark one of his followers - his name is Moses - enjoys to amaze the public by taking the burden of a huge cross on his back.
And where in the world do we see a church without a cross! Still, all Christians must be a bit puzzled. Does the Lord want his true disciples to let themselves be crucified? If so, why? Very strange, all of this!
If you are, however, among the millions of followers of the SûTRaM called the Lotus (Saddharma-pundarîka-sûtram), and if you are among the few who know a bit of Sanskrit, you will immediately see what Jesus has in mind. Scholars have already pointed out long ago that the New Testament writings contain numerous quotations from and allusions to the Lotus Sûtram, a work of Mahâyâna propaganda, and still popular in Japan and China.

The Lotus Sutra

The last words of Jesus are, for instance, taken from the Buddhist gospel! The great hero in this SûTRaM is called a SûTRa-dhârakas, and dhârakas, in Sanskrit means "one who carries". What Jesus therefore is sayng is that YOU, too, have to be a SûTRa-dhârakas to follow him, otherwise YOU are not his true disciple! To carry the STauRoN really means to carry the SûTRaM. It is expressly stated that a true disciple carries a book of the Lotus on his shoulder! Behind the Greek euaggelion we have the Sanskrit synonym sûtram, often taken by Buddhists as meaning good message. The disciple who carries the good message of the Lotus is what in the NT becomes an evangelist. The NT does not confine itself to four evangelists; others are also mentioned.
Behind these we have Buddhist missionaries. Even the term apostle, Greek apostolos can be traced back to a Sanskrit synonym (upasthâyakas or upasthâpakas). One of the main disciples in this SûTRaM is Sâri-PuTRaS. He followed his master's command, and eventually turned up under the name of Simôn PeTRoS. He even found his new home in Rome, where a few bones are now on display. All of this is of course just Buddhist and Christian fantasies. But they certainly have sold well! This means that we here have yet another obvious case of Christianity as crypto-Buddhism, or Mahâyâna propaganda.
In this connection another puzzle finds its solution: The Dalai Lama has paid several visits to Denmark, and I personally recall him having expressed his wonder that many Danes want to turn to Buddhism. "Why", he said, "you already have Christianity! Why Buddhism?".
From these words I can only assume that he, too, is aware that Christianity is a sort of crypto-Buddhism. And the same goes for the Holy Father in Rome. When the Dalai Lama visited Rome in December 2014, it aroused some wonder among Buddhists worldwide that the Pope declined meeting his colleague, for he "did not have time to see the Dalai Lama". The two would certainly have had something to talk about - above all the historical foundations of the Roman church.
The public seems ignorant of the fact that at least some educated insiders in the Vatican know about their own Buddhist roots. This includes the former Pope, Benedict, who has personally supported the publication of a German translation of the Lotus Sûtram. And those who may wish to dig deeper into this embarrassing truth need only consult the scholarly book by Michael Fuss, Buddhavacanam & Dei Verbum. A Phenomenological & Theological Comparison of Scriptural Inspiration in the Saddharmapundarîka Sûtra & in the ChristianTradition, Leiden 1991.
Here, the learned author concludes that the teachings of the Lotus and the New Testament are much the same. He does, however, avoid the most interesting of all questions: How can it be that the New Testament often looks like a copy of the Lotus Sûtram?
Instead, in a note hidden on page 421, Dr Fuss admits that this is "an intricate problem", and then refers to an old book from 1906, wherein the author wrote: "Where the Gospel narratives resemble the Buddhist ones, they seem to have been independently developed on the shores of the Mediterranian and in the valley of the Ganges...".
So, in this way, by using the verb "seem", these authors try to avoid what they very well know to be "an intricate problem". Openly and honstly to admit the simple historical fact of crypto-Buddhism would be very bad for Vatican business, indeed.
In Denmark, Lutheran professors and bishops are now busy baking layer cakes to celebrate the 1517 Reformation (read: Deformation) of Dr Martin Luther, who was, of course, completely ignorant of the fact that his beloved eu-aggelion, or Gospel, was originally the Buddhist Sûtram.
One does not have to be a prophet to foresee the future. In Denmark, Sanskrit and Buddhist studies have been banned from the universities. It is now up to Japanese, Chinese and other scholars carefully to compare, word for word, the Greek text of the New Testament with the Sanskrit text of the Lotus Sûtram and other Buddhist gospels already identified by the few competent European and American scholars active in this important field of research.
Eventually, opposition to Comparative Gospel Studies, will diminish, and even Lutherans will find themselves willing to confess that they were, all along, deep in their hearts, Buddhists. A good English translation of the Lotus by H. Kern from the Sanskrit is available online. It is a must for all Christians interested in their own roots - according to Christ's own words.

May Zeus have mercy upon their souls!

[23-01-2016] Acharya S. in memoriam

Ms Murdock was a brilliant scholar and an admirable American woman. Her defence of the Mythicist position deserves serious consideration.
Of her book “Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of the Christ”, the great American NT scholar, Dr. Robert M. Price wrote: “A really fine introduction to the problem of the historical Jesus… The best of this genre – written with clarity, precision and conviction.”
Students of the Buddhist sources of the New Testament will enjoy our late friend's review of Prof. Michael Lockwood's “Buddhism's Relation to Christianity”. I sincerely hope that her writings on comparative religion and astrotheology will continue to find the many grateful readers they deserve.

Dr. Chr. Lindtner

[05-01-2016] Roskilde Bishop sanctions Hypocrisy

Roskilde bishop Peter Abraxas-Møller has just announced that Annette Berg may continue as a priest in the Danish Church. If she still believes in reincarnation that is a matter between her and God. It cannot be denied that this decision reflects a certain humane and tolerant attitude on the part of the Roskilde bishop - now very busy taking care of the global climate and preparing for the great Layer Cake celebration of Luther's Deformation.
There is a problem, however. What has here been sanctioned will prove fatal to the Lutheran church: If a bishop finds it OK for his pastors to have a personal belief that is opposite to his or her public or official belief, this means a sanction of plain hypocrisy. In his Press Release (4-1-2016) our Roskilde bishop himself commits a serious error when stating: "The study of theology at a university provides us with the tools that enable us to interprete the Bible and the confessional scriptures of the early church as well as of the Reformation."
He is quite mistaken. The truth is that a study of theology at one of the Danish universities does NOT provide the student with the tools required to obtain an honest understanding of, most of all, the New Testament. These 27 books are to a large extent translations from the Sanskrit and Pâli. All Danish professors of the New Testament ban the study of Sanskrit and Pâli as being a requirement for serious NT studies. Chr. Lindtner has warned them again and again. NT professor Mogens Menschensohn Müller stated the official position most clearly at the infamous Q-conerence held in Roskilde, June 2015: We do not want to hear about (Buddhist) sources (in Sanskrit and Pâli)."
Not one single of the many "experts" present objected to his exorcism! All Danish priest have promised to preach the Euaggelion honestly as it really is. But the Euaggelion is the Sûtram (in Pâli: Suttam).
To avoid the charge of hypocrisy, they must take up the study of Sanskrit and Pâli. Shame on all the NT professors who will not do their Buddhist homework! Who will be the first honest Danish priest?

[31-12-2015] Who is THE Christmas BOY?

Christians all over the world have been busy celebrating the birth of a certain Jesus called (the) Christ. Of course, all the bishops and pastors know very well that there is no historical basis for the existence of Jesus Christ or for his birth on that day. They speak so much of love, but never of love of what really counts: love of truth. Otherwise they would have informed their ignorant sheep that this annual celebration is a celebration of mere myths, mainly Buddhist.
Any attentive reader of Matthew 2,8-14 must have been struck by the fact that the evangelist refers to "the boy" no less than six times. Obviously, Matthew wants his reader to focus on "the boy", the Greek being: to pai-di-on.
Why is this? Who is this to pai-di-on? Why these most unusual repetitions?
Any Buddhist familiar with the Sanskrit and Pâli sources of the first chapters of Matthew can provide the simple answer to the question: who is to pai-di-on?
Matthew introduces the first book in the NT with the words: book of birth, Greek biblos geneseôs. The Sanskrit and Pâli original is Jâtakam, meaning book of birth, i.e. rebirth. All Buddhists are familiar with the numerous stories about the rebirth of bo-dhi-sat-tvas (nom. case). The accusative case is: bo-dhi-sat-tvam.What Matthew then goes on to relate is a new myth about the rebirth of bo-dhi-sat-tvam.
In Sanskrit sat-tvam means be-ing, which in Greek become to on (the first and the last syllable of the Greek to pai-di-on). No scholar will deny that the Greek is a perfect synonym of the Sanskrit.
The Greek pai-di- is then a "translation" of the sound of the Sanskrit/Pâli bo-dhi.
If the reader finds this to be a strange way of translation, he is right, but he should also remember that this sort of bizarre rendering was very popular among even the best educated Christian "fathers", e.g. Origen. As was to be expected, Jewish rabbis also loved this sort of play on words.
When Christians celebrate the birth of their Saviour they actually celebrate one of the numerous rebirths of the Saviour of the Buddhists - bo-dhi-sat-tvas.
The holy scripture of all Buddhists is called a sûtram. The term is often taken by them to mean "a good message", as if from su + uktam, well said. The Greek synonym is eu-aggelion, rendered as gospel. Often a sûtram contains a Jâtakam - or many stories of rebirths of bo-dhi-sat-tvas, or some of his disciples.
In 2015, the so-called Holy Father in Rome celebrated Christmas in what an honest historian would called Saint Putras Church.
There is a famous Buddhist Jâtakam according to which Sâri-Putras will be reborn as the head of the Church. Buddhist missionaries never forgot this famous prophecy (found in the ancient Sutta-Nipâtam and repeated in the Lotus Sutra.).
And so this Buddhist apostle eventually was reborn as the first bishop in Rome. His name had now been changed a little bit: He was now reborn or renamed as Simôn Petros. The identity of the two SPs can be proved by any scholar familiar with the Buddhist scriptures. Virtually all the stories told about SP the First are later on repeated by Christians now speaking about SP the Second. In both sources SP is explicitly called "the first (among the other apostles)".
Strictly speaking we do not need to make the distinction, for both of them are mere products of Buddhist-Christian imagination. In a famous gospel passage, the Christ - himself a mere Buddhist phantom - appoints SP as his successor. He uses the name Bar-Iônas in speaking to SP.
The bar- is Aramaic for son, in Sanskrit we have -putras, a perfect synonym. The second part of the word is -Iônas, which contains a pun of the Sanskrit Jinas, a synonym of Buddha(s). (Interested readers can identify the passages in the Lotus Sûtra).
So it is clear that SP - the First as well as the Second - is a son of Buddha, a Jina-putras = Bar-Iônas.
Summing up: When the Holy Father in Rome celebrates the annual birth of to pai-di-on, it is obvious to a serious historian that it is the double SP who celebrates the rebirth of Bo-dhi-sat-tvam. The Holy Father loves to speak of the mystery of transformation.
We now see that this transformation is not that mysterious after all: It is the Roman ceremony that each year turns bo-dhi-sat-tvam into to pai-di-on.
That it is "mysterious" means that it is a simple hoax.
Normally, Christians reject the "Buddhist" belief in rebirth or reincarnation. They prefer something called resurrection.
But what they actually worship is the rebirth of bo-dhi-sat-tvam, which is also a sort of resurrection. So here we again have a simple hoax, or "pious fraud".

In 2008, the Swedish scholar Bert Löfgren published what is certainly the best book on the great Roman hoax ever to appear in that language: Katolska kyrkans djupa hemlighet. It can be ordered from www.recito.se. The title refers to the crypto-Buddhism of the Roman church founded by the myhtical SP.

Our wish for the New Year is this: That the Holy Father and all the bishops will be honest about the source of their Christian beliefs.

Pope worships Bodhisattvam

[29-12-2015] Roskilde Bishop goes Layer Cake

As a rule, Danish bishops are willing to play almost any trick in the book so as to fool their white sheep into the fold of the Danish church. Nothing new about that. Roskilde bishop Peter Fischer-Møller now announces a huge layer cake contest in order to celebrate Luther and the reformation. In this game, a Danish woman, Annemette Voss, famous for baking cakes, plays a major role along with the bishop himself.
Not only can she bake, she can also write about what she bakes. The title of her book "Kage-karma", i.e. Cake Karma.
On November 11, 2015, the bishop published a press announcement where he defined the belief of the Danish church.
The belief in karma, found in Buddhism and in Hinduism, is incompatible with the official belief of the church, which says:
1. Life in this world is valuable in itself and given by God,
2. Soul and body form a unit,
3. Only the grace of God can save us
4. Faith in our resurrection depends on the fact that Christ was resurrected on Easter Sunday.
Comments:
ad 1: It is a matter of common experience, that life in this world is anything but valuable in itself. To hold God responsible for the endless variety of suffering and miserable forms of life is simple blasphemy.
ad 2: If soul and body formed a unit, all would be lost once the body dissolves. Or we would have a soul separated from the body, in which case the two would not form a unit. We would be souls without bodies, i.e. ghosts (as claimed by veteran madcap theologian Old Ted Jørgensen).
ad 3. If life in this world is valuable in itself, as claimed, why would one want God to save us? Who wants to be saved from something valuable?
ad 4. A recent debate involving many of Peter´s fishy colleagues has demonstrated that the doctrine of physical resurrection is plain nonsense. Apart from that, it has been shown by Indologists that all these stories about resurrection are Buddhist fables.

The alert reader can easily expand the list of lies and absurdities for himself.
The great Layer Cake contest is announced to celebrate the mad German monk - as Luther wrote about himself - and his crazy ideas adopted by dishonest Danish bishops.

Celebrating the Lutheran Deformation

Before the Reformation, bishops were among the richest men in the country. The current bishops are still very well paid, but on the average not as wealthy as their Catholic forerunners. But they are no less corrupt, if corrupt means prepared to fool the common people with silly theological lies.
All Danish priests know very well that if no coffee is served, their churches will be almost empty, and they themselves in the long run out of job. Add cakes to the coffee, and the future looks more promising.
Men, who make a good living by way of deception, will of course, abhor the prospect of being held responsible for their deeds. Hence it is understandable that they reject any idea of Buddhist karma, a law of moral retribution. No normal criminal wants to face the music of the law of karma! The four fundamental truths of the Danish church (above) are simply based on deliberate deception. So perhaps, after all, a Lutheran layer cake may serve as a great new symbol of the current state of affairs in the Danish church.
There is a unity of soul and body. The spirit resides on the tongue, the soul in the stomach, and the grace of God consists in the lie that this primitive mode of life may go on forever and ever.
Annette Berg has been condemned for advocating karma, and Annemette, the new saint, will probably be ordered to remove the term karma from the title of her book about cakes.
Empty churches means empty pockets, and empty pockets means empty promises. And one of the most empty promises of all promises offered by bishops has to do with baptism, as understood by Luther.
In an essay from October 2015, our Roskilde bishop thus promises that God is so full of love to all of us - provided we are Lutherans - that he gives us human dignity even if we are quite unworthy of such dignity. It is not at all a question of being a good, honest and decent human being. Not at all!
Instead, you must go to church and let yourself be baptized by some Lutheran priest. Thus a bit of water will turn you into a saint in a jiffy.
Any human being who has not suffered some sort of induced cerebral damage immediately discerns that this is a simple trick designed to attract ignorant citizens so as to fill first the church, then the pockets of the priests, etc.
Along with the baptism bogus, we have the lie about the Eucharist. The Lutheran joke is that you eat and drink the flesh and blood of the Lord. This sacrament is NOT to be taken symbolically in any way. We are dealing with primitive Christian cannibalism.
The two sacraments are thus in harmony with the Lutheran layer cake.
A bit of water makes you a saint, and some bread and wine almost turns you into a god, like JC.
The bishops are, of course, smart enough to understand that all this is bogus.
What they may not know - but what they should know - is that the two fundamental sacraments have been stolen from the Buddhists.
Lutherans claim that faith is sufficient for salvation. Salvation is a gift, not something you can obtain by being a good, honest and decent individual.

Therefore, to sum up, it would seem that Julian, the great emperor, was right when he spoke of the wickedness of the Christians. To claim that human dignity can be obtained by way of deception is an irresponsible denial of true human dignity, a denial reducing humans to mere cannibals.

[05-11-2015] Gospel Denial in the Danish Church

Danish priests, including a bad bunch of bishops, are poorly educated, very poorly educated. Thus the bishop of Roskilde, following in the tracks of the Copenhagen bishop - both of them called Peter - will not allow their evangelical priests to use the word reincarnation. Instead, they should preach fairy tales about "resurrection" -an extremely obscure term, that, if it has any deeper meaning, amounts to much the same as reincarnation.
Had they known the Buddhist sources of the New Testament, they would have known that Buddha was reborn as Jesus, and that Sâri Putras was reborn as Simôn Petros. They would have known that the Greek term for "Gospel", euaggelion is a translation of the Sanskrit synonym sûtram. They would have known that the four gospels incorporate numerous translations from the Buddhists gospels (SDP & MSV).
Had they enjoyed a decent education they would have known that without the Buddhist doctrine about reincarnation there would have been no such thing as the New Testament - a typical product of Mahâyâna propaganda. Thus the traditionally poor education of Danish priests has lead to Gospel Denial.

Resurrection! and/or

reincarnation?!

[02-11-2015] The possible origin of Matthew 27's resurrection of the saints in the Lotus Sutra.

At the head of the pantheon of American theologians, we find Prof. Robert M. Price, aka Wodan, here offering a welcome solution to the old puzzle of the identity of the bodies of the holy men mentioned in Matthew 27.

Danish NT prof. M. Menschensohn suggests, in his commentary on Matthew, that they may have been OT prophets. Good grief! The historical truth is rather different, as already pointed out by Chr. Lindtner years ago in the oldest wooden church in Granhult, Sweden.

[17-10-2015] Madcap theologians agree on real historical event that never really took place

Old Ted - said by the CPH bishop to be the highest Danish authority in these matters, claims that there was no physical resurrection of Jesus Christ! - CL then asks: But, surely, the disciples saw and one even touched a living person considered by them to be Jesus Christ.
So, this fellow must have been someone else than their old teacher! And if the only evidence for physical resurrection and presence is the one provided by the disciples, we cannot even rely on that. The only witness left, therefore, seems to be Old Ted! The disciples could only see JC if he was physical.
Old Ted said he was not physical. And so Old Ted must have seen something that could be seen by no human eye. But if JC was invisible - how could even Old Ted have seen him? And if Old Ted could not see JC, how could Old Ted - especially after such a long time - claim that he was not physical? CPH bishop claims that he does not understand all this - but still believes it all to be true. The third main authority on resurrection is surely Mogens Menschensohn Müller.
With regard to the more than 500 brothers, Dr. Menschensohn claims that they are never mentioned in any other source than 1. Corinthians. Dr. Lindtner has shown the Buddhist source to Dr. Menschensohn, but Dr. Menschensohn claims that it cannot be seen - that it is, in other words - not physical. So much for three main authorities on Christianity in the kingdom of Denmark.

Credo, quod nescio. Nescio, quod credo.

[14-10-2015] New book by prof. Z. Thundy

The Buddhist sources of the celebrated myth of the Death and Crucifixion of Jesus were first presented by Dr Lindtner at the International Conference at Klavrestrom in September 2003.
The Sanskrit text along with an English translation and comments was then reprinted by Michael Lockwood in his book, Buddhism's Relationto Christianity, Chennai 2010, pp. 267-274. Here is now Prof. Z. Thundy´s most recent book on Buddhist Sources of Gospel Narrative. (Available on amazon, click image below.)

His first book, Buddha & Christ: Nativity Stories and Indian Traditions was published by Brill, Leiden 1993. Traditional New Testament scholars now recommend their students NOT to go ad fontes.
Their jobs depend of the existence of a "historical Jesus" of whom they best admit that they know next to nothing. Kenneth Humpreys recently published a nice introduction to what he calls the ultimate heresy: Jesus Never Existed. It should serve as a fine introduction to New Testament studies in all universities.

[10-10-2015] THE FINGERS OF MARK & THE FEAR OF Q

According to an ancient Christian tradition, Mark the Evangelist, was called Stumpfinger - poor chap! But wait a moment! Now here you have a painting by Titian showing Mark with his handicap.

Next to Mark Stumpfinger you have an image of Eve Marie Becker, a German expert on Mark, and professor of New Testament fairy tales, University of Aarhus. Could it be that Eve Marie wants to remind us of Mark? A glance at her left hand might suggest so. As for the fingers of Mark, here is an extract from the African Christian Biography providing a fanciful interpretation of Stumpfinger:

The most ancient prologue to the gospel "According to Mark," the so-called "Anti-Marcionite," preserved only in Latin, unfortunately begins within a lacuna but resuming just where the first preserved word is "Mark," of whom it is then stated that he had related whatever is now missing from this text, but of whom a most peculiar description is found indicating he "was called 'Stumpfinger' (Latin "colobodactylus" from the Greek "kolobodaktulos") because for the size of the rest of his body he had fingers that were too short"; this prologue also knows Mark as "interpreter for Peter" who after Peter's death "wrote this gospel in the regions of Italy," a notion reaffirmed in the completely preserved comparable prologue for the gospel "According to Luke" known in both Greek and Latin texts (Grant 1946: 92-93; Aland 1978: 532-533).

The descriptive comment on Mark's handicap, "he of the 'maimed finger'" or "a man whose fingers were thumbs" (Goodspeed 1937: 145; McNeile 1953: 26-27, with other suggested interpretations), though uncertain whether to be taken literally or metaphorically, is reiterated rather exclusively only in one later Greek context by Hippolytus (c. 155-235) [Refutation VII. xviii; cf. ANF V (1885) 112; Aland 1978: 541].

The real explanation is rather different. As so often when you have a puzzle in a Christian text, you have to trace the Buddhist source for the proper explanation. The Latin term, based on the Greek, is a compound: colobo-daktylus.
The Greek is based on the Sanskrit compound, a synonym: kutila-angulikayâ, with a stump or crooked finger. The Greek/Latin compound is as unique as the Sanskrit original. In the Buddhist source it says that KuMâRaS - the Buddha as a baby - bends his fingers so that they form a hook that enables him to draw an extremely heavy golden bowl that not even 500 horses were able to pull!
The Sanskrit term for the golden cup is PâTRî.
That explains not only how KuMâRaS becomes MaRKoS, but also how PâTRî becomes the interpreter of Peter (genitive form: PeTRi). The bowl becomes Peter! The consonants are the same.
The Sanskrit kutilla-- becomes colobo-, and the finger(s) remain finger(s).
The example is by no means unique, but rather quite typical of how Buddhist fairy tales were transformed into Christian fairy tales.
Plays on words thus turned old fables into new fables.
Once this had been done, the next task for the theologians would be to pretend that the fables actually contained profound historical facts.
Nearly all the fairy tales of KuMâRaS and his Buddhist buddies are like that, making, in the final analysis, New Testament exegesis a lucrative play on words.
References to the Sanskrit source etc, may be found in Michael Lockwood: Buddhism´s Relation to Christianity, Chennai 2010, p. 233. Danish students may want to compare Holger Mosbech: Nytestamentlig Isagogik, Copenhagen 1946, p. 178.
Mosbech offers further fanciful interpretations.
When Chr. Lindtner tried to point out the Buddhist source of Mark Stumpfinger at the Q Conference in Roskilde, June 2015, he was immediately interrupted by another German New Testament professor, Heike Omerzu.
Here is a quote from Heike Omerzu spelling out the purpose of the Q Conference (email to participants, May 21st):

"The issue we would like to address is NOT an 'identification' of Q, but to question what is at stake in the quest for sources and which difference this makes for gospel interpretation."

In plain words: The leading Danish New Testament theologians do NOT want to hear about the sources of the New Testament. Prof. Mogens Menschensohn Müller made that point even more clear, when he yelled to Dr Lindtner on the last day of the conference: "NO MORE SOURCES!"
The general conclusion seems evident: Leading Danish theologians are not really interested in the historical Jesus, and certainly not interested in Q being properly identified. What is at stake is simply their own survival.

[06-10-2015] Warning! More new Greek sources of Buddhism and Christianity!

Several veteran scholars of Sanskrit, Buddhism, Christianity and comparative religion have made the sad experience that it is virtually impossible to find an independent publisher willing to bring out research dealing with the historical origins of major world religions.
There are many good reasons to maintain that the major religions have purely mythical origins. But who will publish a book or a paper claiming that Jesus or Buddha never existed!
One of the few exceptions to this deplorable rule is the BRAHMAVIDYÂ, Adyar Library Bulletin published by the Adyar Library and Research Centre (based in Chennai). Since 1937 it has presented valuable studies on religion, philosophy and various aspects of Sanskrit and other Oriental literature as well as editions and translations.
The most recent volume appeared a few weeks ago: Radha S. Burnier Commemoration Volume (actually Vols 78-79/ 2014-2015). There are eight scholars on the Board. The Director is Dr. T. Narayanan Kutty. Before his appointment as Direcor in April 2014, he was a Professor of Sanskrit with specialization in Advaita Vedânta. Anyone interested in the controversial question of Buddhist sources of Christianity and of Greek sources of Buddhism as well as Christianity, may find new materials in the most recent essay by Chr. Lindtner: "What do you think about the Christ" (pp. 47-157).
Other papers dealing with Buddhist sources of the New Testament were published in previous issues of the ALB. There have been several attempts on the part of European theologians to suppress this sort of research. Danish NT professor Mogens Menschensohn Müller spoke for many, when he shouted, at a recent international conference, when Lindtner offered to show Buddhist sources of the New Testament: "NO MORE SOURCES!".

Radha S. Burnier (1923-2013). Not for earning, but for love of learning.

[27-06-2015] Report by Christian Lindtner on the international conference: "Gospel Interpretation and the Q-Hypothesis". Roskilde, 21-24th of June 2015.

The pope, as known, is a Buddhist Sâri-Putras disguised as the successor of Simôn Petros - the first mythical Mahâyâna bishop of Rome. The Christian SP is a "reincarnation" or "transformation" of the famous Buddhist SP. This will be obvious to anyone who compares the relevant Buddhist sûtras with the corresponding Christian eu-aggelion, or "gospel". The Greek term is a synonym of the Sanskrit.
That SP would turn up again was predicted already in Buddhist canonical scriptures. All Buddhist scholars are aware of this fact.
Jesus, i.e. Buddha in disguise, calls SP Bar-Iônas (Matthew 16,17), and Bar-Iônas translates the Sanskrit Jina-putas, son of Jinas (= Buddha = Jesus). At the same time, PuTRaS contains an obvious pun on PeTRoS, i.e. Peter. A Jina-Putras is, in turn, a synonym of a Bodhi-sattva(s).
The main source for the true ID of SP is, of course, the Lotus Sutra.
In the Lotus Sutra, chapter 7, the Buddha tells his disciples that they have all been his disciples in former states of existence, and that they will also be his disciples in future worlds, in other realms - although under different names. (See W.E.Soothill, The Lotus of the Wonderful Law, Oxford 1930 (and later reprints), p. 136.
The NT proves the truth of this prophecy.
The pope knows very well that he has, as it were, a real identity problem. It is very easy for Buddhist scholars to expose him and his 264 predecessors as imposters - Buddhists under different names. The same goes for educated Catholic scholars (See Michael Fuss, Buddhavacanam & Dei Verbum, Leiden 1991). They know that Rome has a problem, a real problem.
Why not try to solve problems in a friendly way?
He, therefore, has very good reasons for inviting Buddhists to a "friendly dialogue", with emphasis on "peace" and "fraternity".

But the path to friendship, peace and fraternity must be paved by honesty and courage and historical truth.
How will Buddhist scholars handle this challenge? Can there be friendship without honesty?
Lutherans also have a problem of their own with regard to the Buddhists sources of the New Testament gospels. This became abundantly clear during the past few days at the Roskilde conference on "Gospel Interpretation and Q-Hypothesis", organized by the Faculty of Theology, Copenhagen University, and sponsored by the Velux Foundation. As veteran Danish professor of NT, Mogens Müller, dictated: We do NOT want to hear about Buddhist sources!
Finally, be sure to listen to what the brilliant and broadminded American theologian Dr. Robert M. Price, has to say about the Lotus Sutra and the New Testament, on Bible Geek, June 10, 2015.

[14-06-2015] Why is the Gospel fourfold?

Scholars of the New Testament will be taking up this old problem of the fourfold Gospel at the Roskilde Q-Conference 21-24th of June 2015. Professor Francis Watson has discussed the puzzle in his recent book: Gospel Writing. A Canonical Perspective. Here is a youtube-interview:

Here is an image of Dr. Price in one of his possible previous incarnations as Wodan.

[14-06-2015] The Temptation of Buddha/Christ and the Fourth Gospel by Zacharias P. Thundy

[03-04-2015] A few good reasons for a more 2015 Happy Easter!

On March 31st 2015, Jørgen Demant (JD), vicar at Lyngby Kirke near Copenhagen, spoke about resurrection, doomsday and eternal life according to the early Christian church. Some thirty persons attended, among these Christian Lindtner and his son. Unexpectedly, Lindtner was invited by JD to give his views about the important but rather obscure idea of eternal life. Finding it impolite to reject a kind invitation, Lindtner stood up and explained: First of all, it must be clear that Jesus Christ is not a historical person but a geometrical figure and a Jewish buddha. Bishop Irenaeus, whose name was mentioned by JD, wrote that Jesus is a name the number of which is 888.
To understand this, CL explained, you must be aware that the New Testament is a typical Pythagorean document. All words are numbers and all words and syllables have been carefully calculated according to certain rules.
To a Greek, a name is also a number. And, as we all know, the Greeks loved geometry. Since this fact — that Jesus is a geometrical figure — was new to all, CL continued, using the white walls of the ancient church as a blackboard, as it were: Among the most beautiful forms that meets the human eye, you will find, in two dimensions, the circle, in three dimensions the sphere. Start then with the 888 circle of Jesus, i.e. I+ê+s+o+u+s = 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888.
Once the 888 circle is given, the inscribed polygons etc. are also given. That is an eternal truth of all life! Thus, the inscribed square is 800, and 800 is the number of the Greek kurios = Lord; or 800 is the number of the Greek pistis = faith. The 888 circle with the inscribed 800 square thus shows you an image of faith in Jesus. It also says that Jesus is Lord.
The cross, i.e. the two diameters add up to 565.6, i.e. 565 or 566. Here, you see Jesus on the cross of the two diameters! Here, 565 says estin = is; 566 says ho monogenês = the only begotten. So far, then, the drawing tells us that Jesus, the only begotten is the Lord. The pentagram is 1344.5, and 1345 is ´Ioudaiôn, of the Jews. So we learn that Jesus is the Lord of the Jews. The hexagon is 848.4; and 848 is basileus, or king. So, he is also king of the Jews. Moreover, the "fish" in the 888 circle is 592; and 888 and 592 add up to 1480 — which is the number of Christ, Greek Khristos.
Double up, and you get 2960, the number of the title Son of Man, huios tou anthrôpou (680+770+1510). Numerous other names, titles and surnames of Jesus Christ are given in the New Testament. All of these are, without a single exception, derived logically from the 888 circle.
This is the meaning of the phrase "the word of God" — ho logos tou theou = 1697. 1697 is the number of six diameters inscribed in the initial 888 circle. It is also the number of two inscribed hexagons. The Greek logos, being the Latin ratio, refers to the basic mathematical or geometrical ratio. The ratio that determines the numerical relationship between e.g. the circumference of the circle and its inscribed polygons, will never change.
The life of the given ratio is "eternal". It is eternal, and it is only in this geometrical context that we can speak of eternal life. "How can we gain comfort from such an understanding of Jesus", I was asked. "Keep Pythagoras in mind", was CL´s answer. According to Pythagorean wisdom we must create geometry in our soul. This also means harmony, for the number of Christos = 1480 is also the number of the Greek phrase: The law of Harmony = ho nomos tês harmonias = 70+430+508+472 = 1480. Coming back to the 888 circle, the octagon is 864, which is the number of Pythagoras.
The 1345 pentagram is the number of ho Orpheus. In other words: When we go to church to hear the word of God, we go there to learn more about, to worship, Orpheus and Pythagoras. A Christian church is, in other words, a place, a sanctuary, for all who admire the achievements of the ancient Greek theologians to assemble.
The God in question is, of course, Zeus, the Father of Athena = Zeus Athênês = 612+276 = 888.
The father of Jesus is no other than Zeus, the heavenly father, known to all from Homer. His mother is no other than Athena, mother and virgin at the same time. Need it be said that this is mythology and geometry — not history? Subsequently, the question of the source of all the myths and fables, that are transmitted in the New Testament came up. Lindtner explained to the good vicar that we are here dealing with translations done from Sanskrit and Pâli.
Without a knowledge of these Buddhist languages, the New Testament cannot be understood properly. Lindtner has often made this clear to Danish theologians, most recently when Anders-Christian Jacobsen defended his doctoral dissertation on Origen at the University of Århus. No Sanskrit, no Pâli: no serious New Testament scholarship. The 27 books of the New Testament are by and large a mosaic of Mahâyâna and Old Testament or Jewish ideas.
We are, in short, dealing with typical Mahâyâna propaganda, with a collection of Buddhist and Jewish fables on a Greek geometrical basis. Vicar JD was not unwilling to accept the term "narrative", but had problems with the phrase "Buddhist fables". Is it not sufficient that all these stories about Jesus etc. are "nice or good stories"? How, then, asked Lindtner, can we avoid pure subjectivity and contradictions etc.? How can we distinguish truth from falsehood?
Lindtner, as a historian and philologists, challenged the Lyngby vicar to arrange a synod of Danish theologians. Lindtner offered to demonstrate, by comparing the Sanskrit, Pâli and Greek word for word, how the evangelists had done their creative "translations". As an example of such translations, CL provided the Lyngby vicar and a few other interested with a copy of his handout from AIAS, Aarhus 27-02-2015: The Buddhist sources of the "more than 500 brothers", and other primary sources.
Asked why he wanted to bring all this up by the vicar, Lindtner, amazed, answered: Because it is my academic duty, and a question of personal integrity, we must do our utmost to be true to history. But is historical truth that important, replied the good vicar?
Can we not do with nice fables? Being only too familiar with this objection from previous debates with Danish theologians, Lindtner spelled it out that to avoid insanity, we must make a sharp distinction between truth and fiction. The old tale about geocentrism, for instance, should no longer be told in church. Likewise with the fable of Jesus Christ. They may be nice, sure, but they are not true to fact!
Jesus is, Jesus was, and Jesus will remain an eternal geometrical figure. But he never was a historical person. Surely, you can, as the priests still do, tell all sorts of stories and fables about him. But the priest must also inform his audience that the fables are just fables, most of them Buddhist fables. The celebrated creed of the 12 apostles — all Buddhists —are but fables.
It is simply dishonest to pretend otherwise. This point has often been made by Lindtner, e.g. is his letter to the editor of "Det Grønne Område" (9-1-2015):"Præsternes fortællinger er sandt nok buddhistiske eventyr" - The fables of the priests are really Buddhist fables. The old church in Lyngby was, of course, not the place to talk about the Pythagorean sources of early Buddhism. Lindtner has done so elsewhere.
Nor was there time to talk about the Pythagorean sources of the books of Moses. But the main point was spelled out and will continue to be spelled out: Without the Pythagoreans and without the Buddhists, we would have no such things as the New Testament and the churches of Christianity. "I am the life" — eimi hê Zôê = 65+8+815 = 888.
Thus Jesus identified himself with the 888 circle.

Lyngby church

[16-03-2015] Alexandrian Crypto-Buddhism

For how long will the New Testament teratologians go on ignoring the numerous and obvious Mahâyâna sources of the New Testament and the early Alexandrian school of Pantaenus, Clement and Origen? On February 27th 2015, Dr. Lindtner presented the Buddhist sources of "the more than 500 brothers" (1 Cor. 15,6), etc. at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies.
The theology and soteriology of Origen often reads like a copy of that of the celebrated Lotus Sûtra. Buddhist sources have been available for so long that there is no longer any scholarly excuse for ignoring them. As pointed out by Lindtner, opposing ex auditorio, there can be no doubt that Simôn Petros called Bar-Iônas is no other than a "reincarnation" of the famous Sâri-putras, the Jina-putras of the Lotus Sûtra. Behind Bar-Iônas we have Jina-putras.
He is, as known, the first among the 12(00) in both sources. We are here dealing with typical Mahâyâna propaganda.

[14-03-2015] Emperor Julian on the Wickedness of the Christians

Recent commotions in Danish media concerning the resurrection and miracles of a certain Jesus - who never even existed - have reminded us of the words of Emperor Julian, as set out in the introduction to his admirable essay "Against the Galileans":

"It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that the fabrication (skeuôria) of the Galileans is a fiction (plasma) of men composed by wickedness (kakourgia). Though it has in it nothing divine, by making full use of that part of the soul which loves fable and is childish and foolish, it has induced men to believe that the monstrous tale (teratologia) is truth. " (translated from the Greek by Wilmer Cave Wright).

Little has changed since that great emperor wrote these words of truth!

[07-03-2015] Majority Rights Radio

Christian Lindtner speaks with GW and DanielS on Majority Rights Radio about the madness of Holocaust denial, the decline of the higher institutions of education since 1968 and the Buddhist sources of Christianity and Greek sources of Buddhism: Majority Rights Radio.

[03-02-2015] New book by Dr. Chr. Lindtner: REVELATION OF BODHICITTAM

Tibetan text, Sanskrit fragments, with English and German translations, Introduction and Notes.
- Includes a new Essay on the Greek sources of early Buddhism, and some of the Buddhist sources of the New Testament, e.g. 1 Corinthians 15 (Paul's two bodies, physical resurrection, etc.).
May now be ordered directly from the German publisher: www.angkor-verlag.de

[27-12-2014] We are not offended!

According to the news, Vatican arrests a young Ukranian woman for offending the faithful on St. Peter's Square. By baring her chest, she made the point: god is a woman. This is in part correct, for the father of the Jews, including Jesus, is called ho Abba = 70+6 = Athênê. The mother of Jesus is no other than Athênê, known to all as virgin and mother at the same time.
The Jews identified her with ho Abba, reducing thereby mom and dad to one. Zeus was once swallowed by his father, now the Jewish god swallowed the daughter of Zeus! Fair enough!
But quite as important: Since Saint Peter, or Simôn Petros, is certainly no other than the Buddhist Sâri-Putras in Roman disguise, the Pope should immediately have praised her for calling the world's attention to this simple and obvious historical truth that the Vatican has done its best to cover up for ages.
Here, in Denmark, Copenhagen bishop Peter - the Mirage in the Manger - also tells silly fables about Jesus and Saint Peter. Hence, we shall not be offended in case the young Ukranian blonde should decide to appear as a new Eve, e.g. here in Copenhagen.
Should the Vatican authorities be so unwise as to keep her in arrest, she may, if possible, seek solace in her confinement by consulting www.jesusisbuddha.com for further details about the Vatican delusions.

[23-12-2014] Merry Christmas: The Mirage in the Manger.

Here, on German TV, Guido Knopp interviews three erudite German New Testament theologians. The question is: Is Jesus a myth? Two theologians think or feel that Jesus is/was a historical person.
But they fail to produce any convincing rational argument for what they "feel" to be true. He is "certainly, probably" a real man! Dr. Annette Metz is so silly as to claim the story of Jesus must be true since Jesus has such a horrible end that it cannot simply be an invention! Does that mean that all horrible stories are real?
Dr. Detering, on the other hand, provides good, but insufficient arguments to support his claim that Jesus is just a typical Hellenistic myth, like that of Osiris, Attis etc. The basic fault or shortcoming of the three theologians is that they IGNORE two facts: 1) The obvious Buddhist sources, and 2) the common gematria of the Buddhist and Christian gospels. Germany still has many fine scholars.
It is a scandal that the NT scholars simply ignore the empirical evidence right before their eyes! - The second scandal is that German historians of religion still follow blindly in the tracks of the ignorant NT scholars.
In Denmark, Peter, bishop of Copenhagen, has still not found the time to have a closer look at the Buddhist sources of his Christian faith. Instead, he says, he now takes delight in "gazing at Jesus, the baby in the manger". In Denmark, at this time of year, there are thousands of theologians absorbed in dreaming about the mirage of the Jewish king who never existed.
NT Christianity is a typical example of the Mahâyâna propaganda. As Nâgârjuna often said: All things, including the Buddhas, are empty, like a dream and like a mirage. Christmas, then, is the time of the mirage in the manger.

The bishop as the baby...

Voltaire: Those who can make you believe in absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

Thomas Jefferson: I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

Buddhist scholar: This is just a pirate copy of a celebrated Buddhist myth (found in SBV I, pp. 44-45). First, the baby was placed in a FUR JACKET (Sanskrit: ajina-sâtikâ) . Nice and cosy! Then the gods arrived to worship, bringing three different gifts, the last being a câmaram, which in Matthew 2: 11 obviously becomes smyrnan. The OT source (Jes 60:6) only mentions two kinds of gifts. The third is from us! The OT and the Buddhist source were combined, as usual. Myth upon myth!

[19-10-2014] The new Danish Reformation comes to Koldmose Kirke in Jutland.

Unlike Copehagen bishop Peter, who speaks of the importance of openness and dialogue, but actually has no time to talk about the Buddhist sources of the resurrection, reincarnation etc., the good pastor at Koldmose Kirke is a friendly and open-minded Christian.
Here, outside the entrance to the church, Dr Lindtner tells John about Jesus as the 888 circle; about the Buddhist sources of the holy mass, about Jesus as the light of the world, i.e. the light of the sky and the sun right above our heads.

Jesus is the light of the sun that "walks" on the surface of the water. - Note the geometrical windows below: The 800 square of Lord (kurios) and Faith (pistis) in the 888 circle of Jesus. The square inscribed in the 800 square is 565.5, which is "is" = estin, or 566 = the only begotten = Greek ho monogenês. So it says Jesus is Lord, etc.

Jesus 888 often says "I am" = Greek egô eimi, the number of which is 873 - the decagon inscribed in the 888 circle of Jesus. Once you know this, you can easily identify "the grain of wheat", "the light of the world", etc. All on the basis of the 888 circle.
You just have to know a bit about the Greek alphabet, with which Jesus identifies himself when admitting that he is the first and the last letter of that alphabet. The Greek alphabet consists of 8+8+8 letters!
The two faculties of theology in Aarhus and Copenhagen never tell you these things! Hence, a new Reformation is urgently called for.

What are we to think of bishops and professors who ignore the meaning of the Gospel of Jesus?

[14-10-2014] Dr. Christian Lindtner confronts the Bishop of Copenhagen with the Buddhist sources of the resurrection and reincarnation. Bishop does not know and does not want to know.

[17-05-2014] Chr. Lindtner speaks about the pythagorean sources of Buddhism and Christianity at the university of Saint Petersburg.

Time for the Lindtnerean Revolution

"What is needed is a paradigmatic shift - a Lindtnerian Revolution - in outlook, which, of course, will entail a change in outlook far more unsettling to traditional Christianity than even Darwin´s Theory of Evolution has been!" (Quote from Prof. em. Michael Lockwood, Buddhism's Relation to Christianity, Chennai & Delhi 2011, p. 241)
Also see the video on youtube with Norman Lowell and Lady Michele Renouf, click below:

[29-04-2012] Faith as (small or big as) a Mustard Seed

It is a great pity that NT theologians still have the
chutzpah of ignoring the numerous Buddhist sources of almost all the parables
of the mythical Jesus.

The German NT scholar Heinrich Weinel in his
book on the parables of Jesus (DieGleichnisse Jesu,
1903 & 1910) , was willing to admit that Jesus had been influenced by
Indian parables, above all that of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke
19:12-27).
It was the German Indologist H. Jacobi who first
translated it (from the Uttarādhyayana 7:15-21), and it runs:
" Three merchants set out on their travels, each with his capital;
one of them gained there much, the second returned with his capital, and
the third merchant came home after having lost his capital. This parable
is taken from common life; learn (to apply it) to the Law. The capital is
human life, the gain is heaven; through the loss of that capital man must
be born as a denizen of hell or brute animal...He who brings back his
capital is (to be compared to) one who is born again as a man...But he
who increases his capital is (to be compared to) one who practises
eminent virtues; the virtuous, excellent man cheerfully attains the state
of Gods." (Quoted from Richard Garbe, Indien und das Christentum,
Tübingen 1914, p. 42; reprinted Süderbrarup 2004)

Weinel admitted that Jesus may have been influenced
by this Indian parable, but found that Jesus changed it so that it became
more profound, more original, more poetical.

The reader may judge the poetical originality of
Jesus for himself! -

Let us now look at the celebrated parable of the
mustard seed! It is about the power of faith.

According the Matthew 17:20, if you have faith (pistis)
as (big - or small?) as a mustard seed (kokkos sinapeōs,
you can order a mountain to go from here to there, and it will do so.

According to Luke 17:6, if you have faith as a
mustard seed, you can order a mulberry tree (suka-minos) to pull
itself up by the roots and plant itself in the sea, and it will.

According to Mark 11:20, Jesus cursed a fig tree (sukź).
He then said, that if you have faith in God, you can tell this mountain
to get up and throw itself in the sea, and it will.

All this is about "little faith" - oligo-pistia
- the word (a compound) only appears here (Matthew 17:20), and, as I
have pointed out elsewhere (infra), translates the noun
corresponding to the Sanskrit adjective alpotsukas,
from alpa(s) + utsukas ( = alpotsukas, "
having little faith"). As a rule, it is used by the Lord only.

Jesus speaks of faith, of a mustard seed, of a
mountain, of the sea (ocean), and of a mulberry tree, or a fig
tree.

The Buddhist source of all this is to be found - as
to be expected by now - in the usual source, MSV, I, pp. 186-187.

The Buddhist legend in brief is this:

Udāyī (nom. ) has faith (prasādas) in the
Sākya monk, i.e. Sākya-munis (the Buddha from Kapilavastu). He goes to
the king, the father of Sākyamunis. The king is impressed by the peace of
mind (upasamas) of Udāyī. He asks Udāyī , if Sākyamunis also has
such a peace of mind?

Udāyī confirms that this is so, but that the peace of
mind of Sākyamunis is very different. His own is small
like that of a mustard seed (sarsapa-vat) whereas that of
Sākyamunis is huge like the Sumeru mountain. Moreover, his own
is small like that of the amount of water in the footstep of a cow (gospada-vat),
whereas that of the teacher in whom he has faith, is profound as the
ocean (samudra).

I have already pointed out how MSV has served as a
source for numerous passages and ideas found in the NT gospels. Hence
there can be no room for doubt that the parables of Udāyī served as a
source of the parables of Jesus.

I have also already pointed out elsewhere (infra), that
if Jesus was responsible for the parable of the ten virgins
in Matthew 25:1-13, then Jesus must have been
a great Sanskrit scholar. Only a Sanskrit scholar could have
rendered it into Greek. This parable is to be found in the MPS (a part of
the MSV; only in Sanskrit, not in the Pāli version).

The parable of the mustard seed presupposes a direct
knowledge of the Sanskrit:

The version of Udāyī is so plain and rational that no
further comments are needed. His own faith in Sākyamunis has given him
peace of mind, but his own peace of mind is very small compared to that
of his Lord.

Comparing the original to the
"transcreation" in the NT gospels (cf. also the Gospel of
Thomas 20), we learn a lot about the "poetical originality" of
"Jesus". We are dealing with wild and irrational exaggerations.
All is mixed up. The pirate copy is by no means more
"profound" than the original, but - deliberately so
- highly paradoxical. The intention of "Jesus" is
to puzzle and thereby also to attract his readers.

Accordingly, his obscure parables have
puzzled his readers ever since.

It is now easy to identify the suka-minos in
Luke (and the sukź in Mark). The suka-minos is a pun on
Sākya-munis. The mulberry tree as well as the fig tree refer to
Sākya-munis.

He was cursed by Jesus, he was thrown into the ocean
by the new faith.

The Indian king of Dharma has thus been
replaced by the Jewish king of Righteousness.

That trick of transcreation is a part
of what - quite understandably - had to remain the Secret of
the Christ. Behind Jesus we find the Buddha. Early "insiders"
must have been aware of the true identity.

And it is still a question of faith, and the old
Buddhist ideal of heaven remains the same.

(Note
to the reader: Here and infra I have used a simplified
transcription of Sanskrit and Pāli words, leaving out some
diacritical marks on sibilants etc.)

[25-04-2012] Mary Magdalene and the Empty Tomb,
John 20

This is a legend based, as so
often, on two or more different Buddhist sources, the SDP and the SBV of
the MSV.

From the SDP we have the motive
of the empty stūpa(s)
that contained the Lord. The Sanskrit stūpas
becomes the Greek taphos,
"grave". In John 20:7, the San. stūpas also becomes Greek topos,
(empty) place, where the body of the Lord used to be located. The sense
and sound (consonants) of the original Sanskrit have been preserved well.
The "translation" is faithful to sound and sense at the same
time, as so often.

The purpose of the legend is to
"prove" the Resurrection of Jesus. All the NT
"proofs" have, as I have shown by now, been taken from
Buddhists sources. They do, therefore, not prove any historical event,
but they do prove that the NT to a large extent is a "pirate
copy" of Buddhist sources.
Things take place, not "out
there", but "in here" - in the imagination of the
authors. We are, to be sure, not dealing with mere parallels, but with a
direct literary dependence - as can be seen from the following
observations:

John 20:1 starts out with the
odd phrase:

tź de mia tōn
sabbatōn,

which is a DIRECT RENDERING af
the eight syllables of the very common introductory Sanskrit:

ekasmin khalu
samaye

with the frequent variant:

tena khalu
samayena

On one, reportedly (khalu)
occasion; on that, they say, occasion; once upon a time.

Note how nicely eka- becomes mia, how tena becomes tź de, how
the final samaye/samayena
becomes sabbatōn.
Even the Gr. de
retains some of the force of the San. khalu. The San. khalu
indicates, in Mahāyāna usage, that this is something that is supposed to
have taken place: "it is said, for sure, reportedly".

The legend of the woman who in
the early morning sees the empty bed of Yasāh is reported in the SBV (I, p.
141) in these words:

4. This is applied to Jesus -
Yasāh - who was now raised, not from the bed, but from the dead,
John 20:11. John refers to the graphź,
scripture, i.e. the SBV, I p. 141. (Likewise, "Paul", in 1 Cor.
15.)

5. kumāras becomes kurios, and Yasās becomes
Jesus.

6. mahāsayane becomes eis to mnźmeion,
to the tomb.

7. The na drsyate,
he - kumāras/kurios
= Jesus - is not seen. This is the main motive.

8. The iti reflected
in the ref. to graphź,
John 20:9.

The story goes on: The woman
runs to the father of Yasāh (Simon Peter), who suspests that his son may
have been taken away by robbers, and therefore sends out his men to look
for him etc. In the end, Kumāras turns up again - safe and sound. There
is a sermon about rebirth in heaven - svarga-kathā.
There is a teaching that is like a pure cloth, suddham vastram
- the sudarion,
linen cloths, in John 20:7. Jesus refers to his "brothers",
John 20:17, and the original also refers to the four brothers of Yasās
(I, p. 146). Jesus refers to his father, who, in the original, is the
father of Yasās. The wife and the mother of Yasās are also converted (I,
p. 144), as are his four brothers (I, p. 146).

What Matthew, Mark and Luke have
to report about the alleged resurrection can easily be traced, with
several nice details, to the same Buddhist sources, above all the
MPS in the MSV.

The strange mother of
Joses, Mark 15:47, was the mother of Yasās. The Jesus from Nazareth of
Mark 16:6 was here Yasās from the town - nagarī - of Vārānasī (I, p.
146). The FOUR brothers of Yasās accounts for the FOUR brothers of Jesus,
Matthew 13:55. Their names are listed SBV I, p. 146. Each of them is - as
Yasās - described as an agra-kulika-putras,
i.e. as a son, putras,
of an agra-kulika,
belonging to a prominent (agra-)
family, the nobility, the chief family". It is because of this
relationship, that Yasās is called a kumāras,
prince. Here, in Matthew 13:55, Jesus himself is described as "the
carpenter's son", ho
tou tektonos huios - a direct rendering of the San. used for
Yasās and his brothers: agra-kulika-putras
- seven syllables in the original and in the copy.

What went on in the mind of
"Matthew" when he chose to render San. agra-kulika-putras
by ho tou
tektonos huios? Well, first of all, the putras at the
end of the compound was no problem: putras
becomes huios,
son. Then he faced the five syllables agra-kulika.
According to our dictionaries, kulika-
means not only "of a good family", but also refers to the chief
or head of a guild, even an artist of high birth. Now, the father
of Jesus was certainly of high birth, being "the son of David",
Matthew 1:20. Moreover, the Greek tektōn
can mean a craftsman or workman of almost any sort, a master in any art.
The Greek tektōn
can, therefore, be accepted as a fine rendering of the San. agrakulikas.

A summary will make all this
come out more clearly: The main person is Yasās, a kumāras, the
son of an agrakulikas
in Benares. Yasās becomes sick and tired of life in the palace. One night
he wakes up, sees the harem women, and leaves his big bed.

A little later, one of the
concubines wakes up and sees the empty bed. She runs to the father of
Yasās, who suspects that his son may have been kidnapped for the robbers
to collect a ransom. He sends out two groups of men to seek for the son.
The son is found in the company of Bhagavān, who, by way of a miracle,
makes Yasās invisible so that his father cannot recognize him. John
follows this story, but faces certain problems. John cannot give any
natural explanation for the tomb of Jesus suddenly being empty. Why would
kurios
want to leave the grave?

Mary Magdalene faces the same
problem. She suspects that "they" may have stolen the body of
her Lord - but why would "they" want to do that? Certainly not
to collect ransom money - for who would want to buy the dead body of
Jesus? She then suspects the gardener - the invisble Kumāras - to have
removed the body. But what would his motive have been? Perhaps to sell
the grave to another? We do not know.

John then has to resort to a
supernatural explanation - resurrection.
But even this notion is taken by combining two different Buddhists
motives. On the one hand we often hear that humans can stay in hell for
some time, and then come up again. Such a person is called a nārakas -
which becomes Greek nekros,
dead.
The other idea is that of a human being who wakes up from his/her sleep.
The compound is supta-pratibuddhas,
being awake again after having slept. By combining these two entirely
different notions, John and the early Christians find Buddhist support
for the idea of resurrection from the dead.

The authors of the gospels
combined the motive of the empty bed of Kumāras with the motive of the
empty stūpa(s) of a Tathāgata(s). Nearly all the other events having to
do with Easter can be traced back to these Buddhist sources, above all
the MPS.

In 1982, Dr. Derrett took it for
granted that we were here dealing with an account of an historical event.
But later on, in 2001, in his important book, The Bible and the Buddhists, Dr.
Derrett was much more open to Buddhist influence.

[24-04-2017] The Washing of the Feet (John
13)

Some days ago the world was
witness to Benedict XVI washing the (dirty?) feet of twelve priests. This
queer ritual is based on what John 13:1-17 has to report about the
behaviour of Jesus.

As far as I am aware, there are
no Jewish or pagan sources for the odd notion of a master washing the
feet of his disciples. But there is a Buddhist source. It is the Pāli
version of the Mahāparinirvānasūtra,
i.e. the Mahā-parinibbāna-suttanta
of the Dīgha-Nikāya
(D. xvi. 1.22). It runs:

"Then the Lord dressed,
took his bowl and garb (pātra-cīvaram) and went with the group of monks
to the rest-house, washed his feet, entered the hall, and took a seat
against the centre pillar, with his face towards the East. The group of
monks also, after washing their feet, entered the hall, and took seats
around the Lord, against the western wall, and facing the East. And the
Pātali-village laymen (upāsaka) too, after washing their feet, entered
the hall, and took their seats opposite the Lord against the eastern
wall, and facing to the West."

Then follows what in Matthew
25:1-13 becomes the parable of the ten virgins. (This has been reprinted
in Michael Lockwood's Buddhism's
Relation to Christianity, p. 230). Our episode is not to be
found in the San. version of the MPS.

Before they entered the
rest-house etc., a water-pot and an oil lamp had been placed there.
This accounts for the lamps and the oil in Matthew. An oil lamp becomes
oil and lamps. (In San. you cannot see from the compound itself!)

John uses two very rare nouns,
namely niptźr
and lention
to render the Sanskrit pātra(m)
and cīvaram
respectively. So when Lord Jesus was taking (labōn) the lention it
was originally the Lord who took (ādāya) the cīvaram (garb). Jesus, in John's
wild imagination, uses the pātram
or niptźr
for water for washing the feet of his disciples.
The word for the bowl, pātram,
also becomes Petron
(p-t-r-m/n). This is why Peter comes into the picture.

In the original three different groups
wash their (own) feet. They do so before entering the hall, and that is
quite natural. In John the Lord washes the feet of his disciples, but the
disciples are also asked to wash the feet of one another. Not their own.
That is not very natural.

So here we have a picture of
quite a few people busy washing other peoples feet - but not their own!

Certainly, John had a sense of
humor! Would he not have had a good laugh had he seen the Pope washing
the feet of the twelve priests in 2012?

In a learned paper,
"Domine, tu mihi lavas pedes?" ( Studio su Giovanni 13,1-30)
Dr. Derrett (in Italian, reprinted in his Studies in the New Testament,
Vol. III, Leiden 1982, pp. 130-160) has discussed most of the different
interpretations of this curious incident where a teacher washes the feet
of his students.

Why do theologians always tend
to take for granted that the NT gospels are written by people with little
or no sense of humor? Imagine a famous professor washing the feet of his
students in class!

John also refers to Judas, the
famous "traitor". But we now know that this Judas was concocted
by combining various words etc. from the MPS having to do with Cundas,
the last meal, the theft and with the unknown monk who was a traitor (see
Lockwood, op. cit., p. 203).

All these events took place
shortly before the death and resurrection of the Lord - in the Buddhist
and in the Christian gospel. The Christian account of Easter is, in other
words, a fanciful combination of Jewish and Buddhist elements.

[21-03-2012] Walking on Water and Peter“s
Faith (Matthew 14:28-33 par)

According to Buddhist lore, a
Buddha is in possession of supernatural faculties allowing him, the
"God above the Gods", to fly like a bird in the sky, to pass
unhindered through walls, to walk on water as if on solid ground etc. -
to mention just a few of many similar miracles.

According to Greek mythology,
Hercules could also walk on water. Like Jesus, Hercules is a son of the
God, i.e. of Zeus.

The Jews of the OT said the same
of their Lord, the God, kurios
ho theos, whose proper name we are not allowed to mention.

Thus, in the Greek words of Job
9:8, God may be seen "walking around on the sea as on firm
ground". Here, the Greek (but not the Hebrew, which is quite
different!) runs: peripatōn hōs
ep“ edaphous epi thalassźs.

This is almost a literal
translation of the Pāli: udake
pi (abhijjamāno) gacchati sayyathā pi pathaviyam (cit.
Derrett, The
Bible and the Buddhists, p. 70).

Matthew , in his usual way,
combined the OT passage with this and other Buddhist passages when he
composed his version of Jesus walking on water (Mt 14:22-33 par).
Mt 14:25 replaces the genitive of Job by writing: peripatōn epi tźn
thalassan. But Luke 6:48 retains the genitive of Job 9:8: peripatōn epi tźs
thalassźs.

The German scholar Norbert Klatt
has argued (1982 and 1990) - quite convincingly - that Matthew“s text
must have been based on the Buddhist text, not vice versa (as Derrett had
argued against Klatt 1982).

Comparing the Christian and
Buddhist (mythical) reports, Klatt“s literary analysis revealed that they
were congruent in the following points (Klatt, 1990, p. 29):

3. Some time later this person
walks about, on or in the water (peripatein,
cankami, cankramati)

4. The waters are depicted as
rough or powerfully rapid

5. The story changes its focus of
attention and turns to another set of persons (disciples or Kassapa)

6. On the water is/comes a boat
with several persons aboard

7. Those aboard the boat are
astounded at the sight of the person walking on the water

8. They do not know who the
person walking on the water is (and therefore ask him)

9. The person walking on the
water identifies himself with the words "It is I"

10. Those in the boat wish to
take the person walking on the water aboard

11. The person walking on the
water enters the boat.

The concordance is obvious, and
Klatt finds that the only way to explain it is to assume that the story
of the walking on the water found its way "from one culture into
another". (p. 30). The "borrowing is from the Buddhist source
into the Christian gospels" (ibid.) Derrett, ten years later (BB, p.
70), wrote that already Martin Dibelius, the German theologian, in 1933,
" rightly divined foreign influence". His own view is that the
Buddhist and the Christian stories may here have "gained reciprocally."
They are somehow historically related.

The main Sanskrit source is, to
be sure, to be found in the Catusparisatsūtra
(part of the MSV), chapter 24. This source escaped Klatt. The Buddha
performs no less that 18 miracles, the purpose of which is to convert a
famous teacher, Kāsyapa(s) and his 500 disciples. Miracle 18 gives the
story of a great flood that arose in the river Nairanjanā.
The Lord is
now surrounded by water. He walks to and fro on a firm sandy spot (in the
middle of the river). An ascetic, Kassapa/Kāsyapas, finding the Lord to
be gracious, fears that he may be carried away by the flood. So he takes
a boat made of tree and goes in search of the Lord.. He sees the Lord
surrounded by water of more than the height of a full-grown man, walking
around on a sandy spot. He asks: "Are you alive, great
ascetic?" - "I am alive, Kāsyapa!". "Come aboard,
great ascetic! Will you come into the boat made of one tree, great
ascetic?" - "I come aboard, Kāsyapa." -
And the Lord accomplished
such a performance of magic power that he, (his) mind concentrated, rose
up to the boat made of one tree, as water arises. Then Urubilvā-Kāsyapa
thought: "It is marvellous, the extent to which the great ascetic
possesses great supernatural power and authority. But I too am an Arhat."

The purpose in Matthew is the same as in the CPS: If you have faith in
the teacher, as a son of God, you will be saved. The number 5000,
mentioned in Matthew 14:21 links up with 500 in the original. The 5000
are also found in another Buddhist source, the SDP (see my essay from
June 2010, reprinted in Michael Lockwood, Buddhism“sRelation to Christianity,
Chennai 2010, p. 283).

Kāsyapas with his 500 disciples
turn up again in Paul, 1
Corinthians 15:5-6, as Kźphas and more than 500 brothers.
(The "more than" epanō,
from yet another Buddhist source, MPS.)
A "structural concordance" may well be sufficient to establish
a historical relationship, but to be on firm ground the broader context
must also be taken into consideration, if possible.

What is decisive here, is that
the Greek text of Matthew contains some Sanskritisms that can, of
course, only be accounted for by assuming that the Sanskrit text enjoys
the relative (chronological) priority.

These Sanskritisms in Matthew
provide a "Buddhist fingerprint", as it were:

1. In the Greek of Matthew, two
sentences are introduced by an euthus
or eutheōs
(Mt 14: 27 & 31). According to our Greek dictionaries euthus/eutheōs
means "at once, immediately" - which does not make good sense
here. In the Buddhist original
atha introduces a new sentence, and means: then, and then.
Hence the Greek has the sense of the Sanskrit. Here we have Sanskrit
fingerprints.

2. The Greek kat“ idean
in 14: 23 renders the Sanskrit ekānte,
"aside", often said of the Lord.

3. In 14:28 & 29, the epi tźn thalassan/epi
thalassźs of Job has been replaced by epi ta hudata,
on the waters. This is highly revealing, for it reflects the San. udake,
"on water". This noun was not derived from the
quotation from Job! The San. and the Pāli had pi (from api) which in
the Greek becomes epi.

4. Kāsyapas who had not yet been
converted by the Buddha - the great ascetic - is transformed into Peter,
who had little faith. Now we understand why Peter is also called Kźphas
(John 1:42; 1 Cor 15:5 etc.). Behind Kźphas = Petros we have the Buddhist
Kāsyapa(s). The consonants are similar.

5. The compound oligopistos
in 14:31 is most revealing. It only occurs a few times in Matthew, and
once in Luke. Otherwise, it is not attested in Greek before the NT.
It is derived from the San.
alpotsukas, used in exactly the same context, when the Lord
rebukes someone (esp. Māra, the "Devil"). San. alpas becomes
Greek oligos,
synonyms, and San.
utsukas becomes pistos.-The
corresponding abstract noun, oligopistia,
Matthew 17:20 only, pentasyllabic, is a precise rendering of the San.
compound hīnādhimuktitā,
"little faith" (common in Mahāyāna scriptures; see the San.
dictionaries for ref. to the Buddhist sources : MSV etc.).

The episode originally took place near Urubilvā near the river Nairanjanā,
where the Bodhisattva (not yet a sa-buddha) attained perfect
enlightenment as Buddha. Being one, he multiplied himself; being
multiplied, he became one, the CPS says.

The authors of the gospels did
exactly the same: one became many, many became one.
This literary device of turning one into many and many into one is
absolutely fundamental for the "Buddhist" authors of the
gospel. Ther can be several originals behind one "person", and
one "person" can appear as several "persons". One
must never ask for one source only. Otherwise one will sink into the
water!

Matthew 14:22-36 forms a numerical unit. It consists of 222 words, i.e.
one quarter of the most basic of all numbers, 888 - the number of Jesus.
Matthew always has to serve several masters at the same time: The
Buddhist sources, the Jewish sources (OT), sound and sense , and the
Pythagorean requirements of textual geometry (called gematria by the
Jews).

[18-03-2012] To
Fulfil All Righteousness (Matthew 3:15)

The noun dikaiosunź,
righteousness, has been used by Matthew seven times, and has, in recent
years, given rise to numerous discussions and interpretations by
theologians. There is, as always, an OT and Jewish backgound, but there
is also a Buddhist one, which seems to have escaped notice.

The Buddhist source is not just
important for a better understanding of Matthew 3:15, but also because it
allows us to identify yet another of Matthew“s sources - the Prajnā-pāramitā
(PP), still available in several Sanskrit recensions. The most important
versions of the PP have been translated into English by the late Edward
Conze.

The idea in Matthew is puzzling,
if not hilarious: Take a quick dive in a river, and all righteousness
will have been fulfilled!Jesus says to John that baptism is more or less
the same as " quickly fulfilling all righteousness".

How so? - we do not know from
Matthew alone! Obviously, he does not want us to know. It remains his own
secret. The PP known as Suvikrāntavikrāmi-pariprcchā (ed. by
Ryusho Hikata, Kyoto 1958, p. 4, line 5) provides us with the direct
source:

The situation is this: A
Bodhisattva by the name of Suvikrāntavikrāmī asks the Lord (Bhagavān)
about "perfection of wisdom", prajnā-pāramitā. How does
a Bodhisattva quickly attain the fulfilment of the dharma(s) of
all-knowledge? That is the question.

The ideal of the PP is to attain
knowledge of all dharmas (concepts, things, principles, laws etc.) . That
knowledge, we learn from the Lord, is to see that all things (dharma)
are empty. This is, in brief, the message of all the recensions of the
PP.

The knowledge that sees all dharmas
as being empty is the same as enlightenment, or sambodhi. A
Bodhisattva who has attained sambodhi is a sambuddhas -
"fully baptized".
The baptistheis in Mt 3:16 therefore translates the Sanskrit sambuddhas.

In the PP, therefore, it is a
question about the highest kind of knowledge, not about
"righteousness" in any moral or practrical sense of the word.
We are dealing with Buddhist "gnosticism".

In the PP (ibid.) it is a
question of the Bodhisattva living (caran) "in the prajnā-
parāmitā", the locative form of which is the heptasyllabic:prajnā-pāramitāyām. The seven syllables of Matthew 3:15 contains
an obvious pun on the Sanskrit compound:prepon estin hźmin.

Thus Jesus identifies PP with
omniscience. He can do so as a sambuddhas.

A few lines later, PP is defined
as being sarvadharmānām grāhikā, She (as a goddess) grasps all
dharmas.

I have already pointed out in my
book Geheimnisse (p. 357 for ref.) that the Greek: khreian
(ekhō) hypo (sou) baptisthźnai in Matthew 3: 14 is a direct rendering
of the Sanskrit: upasampādayitavya(h).

A teacher may then accept the
novice and say to him : go forth! - pravrājetu.
This imperative, pravrājetu, accounts nicely for the otherwise
quite obscure aphes arti in Matthew 3:15.

As known, it is only Matthew who
places an arti after a verb. The reason, we now see, is that he
imitates the Sanskrit.

On the whole, we here have a
picture of a student coming to a teacher for initiation and
enlightenment. This is Buddhist, and this is what some early Christians
understood by baptism.

I hope these observations have
established a historical link between the NT and the Buddhist PP. Matthew
13: 54 asks from where, pothen, Jesus has this wisdom, sophia.
He does not reveal the source of this unusual sophia. A good
question, indeed: The Greek hź sophia hautź probably rendersthe
Sanskrit prajnā-pāramitā.

Matthew goes on to ask: Is the
name of his mother not Mary? This fits very nicely with what we learn
from the PP- sūtras: Typically, PP is depicted (also in Buddhist art) as
the Mother of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and She is identified with Māyā,
"Illusion". Thus Māyā, or PP, is the Mother of Jesus, the
Sambuddhas.

This is also the right place to
recall that in all the PP (Sanskrit) texts, the number of syllables has
been carefully counted, as reflected in the various titles of PP.
Perfection of wisdom has, for sure, something to do with counting words
and syllables. It is feature that the NT shares with many Buddhist
scriptures. It is a fact that should never be ignored.

Matthew 13:55 provides a
wonderful example of this "wisdom of numbers". Jesus is
identified by a question - is he the son of the carpenter? estin ho
tou tektonos huios, which is 565 + 70 + 770 + 1015 + 680 = 3100 = ho
huios ho tou anthrōpou = The Son of Man. You have to count in order
to identify "the son of the carpenter". That Matthew should use
the PP is, in itself, not surprising. One of his other main Mahāyāna
sources is the SDP, and the SDP also refers, briefly, to the PP. It may
here be recalled that Edward Conze, comparing John“s Revelation
with the PP in 1959, called attention to "close verbal
coincidences" (see Michael Lockwood, Buddhism's Relation to
Christianity", p. 260).

For the Lord taking a bath in
the river, and for baptism in the original sense of initiation (upasampadā)
there are other Buddhist sources (mainly CPS) , not to be found in the PP
(but presupposed). Typically, Matthew combined various Buddhist sources.

Before I forget: The Oratio
montana (Mt 5-7) is a sermon on dikaiosunź (Mt 5: 6 & 10
etc.), a Dharma-desanā ( San. desanā becomes Gr. didakhź in
Mt 7:28). The hoiptōkhoi tō pneumati in 5:3 has always been
difficult. In the PP (Hikata, p. 5, line 4), we have the compound daridra-cittas,
a person of poor mind, poor-minded. The Greek ptōkhos pneumati
would be a perfect rendering ot that San. compound.

In line 5, we have the San.
compound hīnādhimuktikas, which would account well for the Greek oligo-pistos,
Matthew 6:30 etc., a person of little faith. Normally, oligopistos
translates alpotsukas, for sure.

[15-03-2012]"She will give birth to a
son" (Matthew 1:22)

The first seven syllables of
Matthew 1: 22 are a direct translation from the Sanskrit of SBV I, p. 40.
The Greek runs: teksetai
de huion, which is as close to the original Sanskrit that one
can possibly come: putram janayisyati.

More precisely,
"Matthew" here combines the famous OT passage (Esaias 7:14)
quoted in 1:23: "idou
hź parthenos en gastri heksei kai teksetai huion...",
with the Buddhist one just quoted. In 1:22 he adds a de in order to match
the seven syllables of the Sanskrit. To be sure, when I here write
"Matthew", I mean the unknown author or authors, who copied the
SBV (a part of the MSV) in which "Matthew" is mentioned as a disciple
of the Buddha, as I have pointed out elsewhere long ago (cf. Michael
Lockwood, Buddhism“s
Relation to Christianity, Chennai 2010, p. 232).

This method of combining two or
more otherwise quite different passages with one or more words (or
numbers) in common, is very typical of "Matthew" and the other
evangelists. You have two or more different texts with a few words
in common; on that basis you create a third. It is easy - and fun -
to do, but difficult to trace since the sources are not mentioned.

The situation in the SBV is
this:

The mother of the Bodhisattva is
called Mahāmāyā, which becomes hź
Mariam, also four syllables. She "sees" four
dreams. In the first dream, a white "elephant" (i.e. a white
cloud) enters her womb, San. kuksim.
The San. kuksi -
becomes the Greek synonym gastri
(locative), in the womb. She informs the king of her dreams. The king
calls upon some priests skilled in the interpretation of dreams.

They say: deva, yathā sāstre drstam
- putram janayisyati..." Sir, as is seen in a book - she
will give birth to a son...". In "Matthew" these priests
are transformed into an angel of the Lord (aggelos kuriou), an OT motive.
Just as the priests refer to the authority of a book, thus the angel in
"Matthew" also refers to the authority of a book (viz. OT, in
the LXX version). This angel says to Joseph: Son of David... the San. deva, Sir,
God, becomes Daueid.
A few lines later (p. 41), we have the San. deva-putras, the source for the
huios Daueid
in Mt 1: 20.

In the SBV the priests predict
that the child will either become a (worldly) king or leave his home in
order to become a Tathāgata, a famous saviour of mankind. The
Bodhisattva was carried down from heaven (where there are many other
god-sons, deva-putra)
like a cloud driven by the power of the wind (māruta) into the womb.The wind
becomes the holy pneuma
of "Matthew" 1:18 and 1:20. There is nothing mysterious about a
cloud being driven by the wind.

By leaving out the cloud,
"Matthew" creates a great mystery. Easy for him, difficult for
us. The Bodhisattva was born as the king of the Sākyas. Jesus was born as
the king of the Jews. Both descended from heaven for exactly the same
purpose - to teach us about righteousness and immortality.

A little later, we hear about the
various names of the Bodhisattva - Greek to paidion, the boy (SBV I, p.
17-18). Sākya-munis is one of them; Devāti-devas,
God above Gods, is another. Even the gods fall down at the feet of the
prince (kumāra),
and "let therefore the name of the prince be Devātideva
(p. 48), for he is a god above (all other) gods. The OT source of
"Matthew" spoke of his name as Emmanouźl, which means,
when translated, "With us is the God"- meth“ hźmōn ho theos.
The name Em-manuo-źl is unique in the OT and NT. The source is Buddhist
in both cases. The - manou
- contains a pun on the Buddhist - munis, in
Sākya-munis. (Yet another pun on Sākya-munis is found in the suka-minos of
Luke 17:6.) The motive of the king, Herod, who, hearing this, becomes
agitated, and all Jerusalem with him, is also inspired by the SBV, where
we hear about the anxiety of the king (p. 67). The king was afraid that
his son would leave the palace. He did. Jesus left for a foreign country,
Egypt. Eventually, both of them returned.

In the original, the king is
called Suddhodanas. One of the teachers of the Bodhisattva is Ārādas (p.
97). Thus king Herod, Hźrōdźs, is a combination of the king and the
teacher.

What about the mother of
Sākyamuni(s) - was she a parthenos,
a virgin? This question is also taken up in the SBV (p. 34): When she was
still an unmarried young girl, a dārikā,
she was given the name Mahā-māyā, explained as "Great-beauty".
Already when she was still an unmarried virgin, it was said that she
would one day "give birth to a son" - putram janayisyati.
The San. dārikā
means "a young girl", but from the context we can infer for
sure that she was also a virgin. An unmarried girl who was not a virgin
would have been an absolute scandal in the Buddhist/Indian context, as in
the Jewish, of course. But once the Bodhisattva has entered her womb, she
is no longer spoken of as a dārikā, only as the mother or as Mahāmāyā.
She is never a mother and a dārikā at the same time. It is quite clear
from the SBV that the dārikā
had intercourse with the king before she gave birth to the Bodhisattva.
But after she had given birth she no longer longed for any man, SBV, p.
43. She was then "like a virgin", if you wish.

So, to sum up so far: The idea
in the SBV and in Esaias is the same. There is a young girl of whom it is
predicted that she one day will become the mother of an extraordinary
son. There is no suggestion whatsoever that she remains a virgin. The Buddhist and the OT
sources know nothing of parthenogenesis. The Greek parthenos,
the San. dārikā, and the Hebrew haalmah are synonyms. They refer to a
young woman, a virgin, who later on becomes a mother in exactly the same
way that all other girls may become mothers. She is never a
virgin and a mother at the same time.

But when we come back to
"Matthew", the situation is quite different. It has changed.
There can be no doubt that "Matthew" introduces the concept of
parthenogenesis.
Thus we have to look for yet another source. It was not
"Matthew" who invented the paradox of a woman who was at the
same time a virgin and a mother. Any Greek schoolboy would immediately be
able to answer the question: Who is famous for being at the same time a
virgin and a mother?

The answer is, of course:
Athena. Did you never hear of the Parthenon?
I have previously made the point that the Greek text of the NT
often works on two levels at the same time. What appears as a paradox on
the surface, is perfectly logical on the deeper or geomatrical level.

This rule also works here.

On the surface it is a paradox
that a virgin is the mother of the Messiah. But not so once you look at
the statement in terms of geometry:

First you draw a circle with the
circumference 515, which is the number of Greek parthenos
(80+1+100+9+5+50+70+200 = 515). The inscribed square is 464, which is the
number of the mother, hź mźtźr. The double solar cross inscribed in the
515 circle ( = the square containing the 515 circle) is 656, the number
of Messias.

So this nice drawing - which
also looks like the sun - tells you that a virgin (515) is
the mother (464) of the Messias (656). Since 656 is also the number
of Mary, the mother ( Mariam hź mźtźr = 192 + 8 + 456 = 656), the same
drawing also tells you, that the Mother Mary is a virgin who is also at
the same time the mother - of the Messias (if yet another square is
drawn). Since Nazaret is also 464, you can go on and on. The diameter in
the 515 circle is 164, which is the famous Athźnź Nikź (76+88 = 164),
known to all from coins and from the Acropolis.

So, for the Greek readers of
"Matthew" it must have been obvious, that the mother of Jesus
was Athena. In the SBV the Bodhisattva is said to be a
"boy-sun", bāla-sūrya.
It is, also in "Matthew", the Sun that is being born in the
form of a man, Jesus.
Athena is his mother.

The idea that Athena was the
mother of the Sun god is not at all original with "Matthew".
For instance, Cicero, in his De
natura deorum 3, 55, refers to an old myth according to which
Minerva (=Athena) gave birth to Apollo, the Sun god. This myth was also
known to some of the Christian authors. It can be traced back to
Aristotle (see e.g. the references in Arthur Stanley Pease (ed.), M. Tvlli Ciceronis De
natura deorum, Cambridge, Mass. p. 1105).

If Athena is the mother of Jesus
- who, then, is his father? The answer is simple, when you look at how
Jesus elsewhere identifies his heavenly father. It is Zeus. When the
Greeks spoke of the God, ho
theos, they meant Zeus. Jesus, the son of God, is thus the
son of Zeus and his beloved daughter (Homer), Athena. The God is
identified with the pneuma
in John. Zeus was also identified with pneuma by the Stoic philosophers.
So, again, Zeus is the father of Jesus. More about Zeus, the true father
of Jesus later. To Leda he came as a white swan. To Māyā, Zeus came as a
white cloud etc. etc.

All this has provided us with a
glimpse into the workshop of "Matthew": His intention is to
create a myth about a Jewish king. He already is familiar with the MSV
which contains the myth of the king of Sākyas. He was also familiar with
the OT, and he was very much familiar with Greek mythology and geometry.
He uses and "translates" his Buddhists sources as if they had
already been present in the OT. He does exactly the same with his Greek
sources. The readers he first had in mind must therefore primarily have
been Jews. The gospel of "Matthew" is an extreme but also
typical case of Hellenistic syncretism.

[18-11-2011] Dr. Detering“s False Witnesses

Pope Benedikt XVI has stated,
what is, of course, the official view of all bishops, priests,
theologians and orthodox Christians all around the world, namely,
"Jesus is not a myth, he is a man of flesh and blood, he stands as a
reality in history".

But can we really rely on the
Pope in this regard? Is his opinion based merely on faith, or on sound
scholarship? Can we be sure that this Pope is honest? Even
the most critical Protestant theologians cling to a historical Jesus,
e.g. Bultmann: "To doubt that Jesus really existed is unfounded, and
not even worth a word of refutation."

But there are others who think
otherwise, and will have nothing of such papal arrogance. In Germany
there was, for instance, Arthur Drews, and now there is, above all, Dr.
Hermann Detering.

Dr. Detering“s method is
historical and philological, reminding us of the great Eduard Norden. All
views expressed by German and foreign theologians, all pros and
cons are taken into consideration. Detering“s judgment is always
informed, fair and mature. The passage on Chrestus in Suetonius has
nothing to do with Jesus known as Christus. The remaining passages in
Josephus etc. are shown, very convincingly and with many fine
philological observations to be later Christian interpolations.

The motive for making these
interpolations is also obvious. Once they had decided to turn their
mythical hero into a historical person, they had to fabricate evidence in
support. And so they did. When have Christians, starting with Paul,
have any problem with pia fraus if good for the church?

It is, therefore, wrong of
theologians to claim that we here have external evidence for the
historicity of Jesus called Christ.

Dr. Detering does not deal with the
internal evidence of the NT. To him, however, Christianity still
retains a symbolic value, even if Jesus is just a myth, for: "
The incarnation of the Logos is a grandiose religious idea." If
looked upon as a historical fact that took place in the years 1 - 30, it
becomes an intellectual monster.

For a historian who is familiar
with Hellenistic religions and has no apologetic axe to grind, it ought
to be fairly obvious that there is no solid internal evidence in the NT
to support any claim of a historical Jesus.

There were numerous sons
of god in those days, and Jesus is just one of them. Nor should
there be any doubt about the true identity of his heavenly father, ho
patźr ho ouranios, i.e. Zeus.

When the Greeks spoke of the
God, ho theos, they meant Zeus. Zeus had many sons,
typically called kings (anax, basileus), and Jesus is his Jewish
son, and king of Israel. Mary was, alas, not the only virgin with
whom Zeus had a son, as all theologians ought to keep in mind.

But theologians will want to ignore
all these simple and obvious facts. They will want to ignore the
excellent detective work of Dr. Detering, just as they ignored or defamed
the work of Arthur Drews, and just as they have decided to ignore
the fact that "the Greek of the New Testament (is) a patchwork of
various passages from Buddhist scriptures, originally written in Sanskrit
and Pāli" (Michael Lockwood, Buddhism“s
Relation to Christianity, Chennai 2010, p.
250).

If we share Dr. Detering“s faith
in the incarnation of the Logos as a grandiose religious idea, this must
also imply a greater openness in regard to other Hellenistic religions,
for we are here dealing with ideas that have Orphic and Pythagorean
roots. That, however, is another topic, about which one would like to
hear more from Dr. Detering.

One of the very few things I
missed in Dr. Detering“s book was a discussion of Hadrian“s letter to
Servianus, where the Roman emperor (117-138) writes:...illic qui Serapim
colunt, Christiani sunt et deuoti sunt Serapi, qui se Christi
episcopos dicunt..etc. The contents of this letter does not suggest a
later interpolatio christiana. Nor can it be taken as evidence of a
historical Christ, rather on the contrary.
On p. 37 read legomenou for legemonou.

[11-11-2011] A Lindtnerian Revolution is needed...

Buddhisms
Relation to Christianity. A Miscellaneous Anthology with Occasional
Comment
This is the title of the first extensive and highly qualified critique of
the CLT. The author is Professor emeritus Michael Lockwood, who has
taught philosophy for 32 years at Madras Christian College. Dr Lockwood
is an accomplished scholar who has published translations from the
Sanskrit and brought out a book about Indian art etc.
He is also a scholar
of Greek and Hebrew, and thus in a good and rare position to take part in
the important debate suggested by the title of the book that has just
appeared in Chennai, India (Tambaram Research Associates). The book - 288
pages, beautifully produced - contain the following sections:

1. A survey of two hundred years of scholarly work on the remarkable
parallelism between the messages and lives of the Buddha and Jesus.

2. Buddhist sculptures that parallel episodes in the Christian
scriptures.

3. The inscriptions of King Ashoka, revealing the spreading abroad of the
Buddhist doctrine of Dharma, as far as Egypt and other countries around
the Mediterranean. Many parallels between Buddhist and Christian
doctrines are pointed out.

4. The widespread legend of Christian sainthood during medieval times;
how the Buddha was somehow turned into a Christian saint.

5. Only Buddhism and Christianity have made extensive use of parables -
and the Buddhists came first!

6. Various parallels in the sayings of the Buddha and Jesus.

7. Various pioneering developments achieved by Buddhism, as a missionary
religion, prior to similar developments in Christianity.

8. The debate about the historicity of Jesus. Various arguments for and
against are considered.

9. A closer look at two examples of "extreme revisionism",
holding that Jesus was not a historical person, and that the evangelists
who wrote The New Testament, were crypto-Buddhists: "The pioneer of
this extreme revisionism is the Danish Sanskrit scholar, Christian Lindtner.
The strong reactions to his radical views have illustrated the basis of
the Indian warning not to inquire too deeply into the origin of God-men
and rivers."

The learned author reproduces
almost all the entries on www.jesusisbuddha.com, and offers
his extremely competent and mature critique with a full command of the
Indian and Christian sources in question.

He writes, inter alia (. 143):
"The Danish academic, Christian Lindtner, is one of the foremost
scholars arguing that the so-called 1 st century CE person of Jesus is
really a disguised projection of the historic Buddha by the New Testament
evangelists who are themselves, crypto-Buddhists, basing much of their
writings on Indian Buddhist Sanskrit and Pāli sources. Lindtners
theories and writings, quite predictably, have been considered outrageous
and hurtful by Christian circles. Some of his critics have also accused
him of being a Holocaust denier and of having various other moral flaws.
These accusations have no relevance whatsoever to academic issues - his
critics, in this, commit the ad hominem fallacy in reasoning, the most
widespread of fallacies! There have been, thus, very few qualified
attempts to refute Lindtners views, as there are very few
persons with the linguistic qualifications to support such
refutations: a command of the various languages of the Buddhist
scriptures and writings, as well as a command of the languages of the
Jewish and Christian scriptures and writings."

Furthermore, Lindtner has established that passages of the Greek New
Testament were translated from Sanskrit and Pāli (p. 250):
"Early Gnostic scholars were, in fact, the very creators of what
were to become the canonical Gospels of the New Testament -allegorical
narratives about Jesus the Messiah composed using a strange ingenious
process of creatively translating into the Greek of the New Testament a
patchwork of various passages from Buddhist scriptures, originally
written in Sanskrit and Pāli. The use of this method of
"transcription" from Sanskrit and Pāli into Greek has been
firmly established by Christian Lindtner."

So, to conclude, what now is needed, is "a Lindtnerian
Revolution" (p. 241): "What is needed is a paradigmatic shift -
a Lindtnerian Revolution - in outlook, which, of course, will
entail a change in outlook far more unsettling to traditional
Christianity than even Darwin's Theory of Evolution has been!"

These are brave words! Professor Lockwood can be happy that he is
now emeritus!
When Lindtner wrote words to the same effect in 1998 the immediate
reaction from "academics" was the demand to have his books
burned and himself prevented, by any means, from doing further research
into the Buddhist sources of Christianity.

Rosaries
and Catacombs - and the Pope's Tiara

One
of the most obvious cases of Buddhist influence on early Christian cult
is provided by the Rosary - Latin: rosarium. Typically, the Buddhist
rosary consists of 108 beads. Burmese monks are known to have used
rosaries consisting of 72 beads, i.e. 2/3 of 108. Sikhs also use strings
with 108 beads for prayer, and so did the ancient followers of Vishnu.,
who, perhaps, influenced the Buddhists. Among some Muslims the number is normally
99. The original Catholic Rosary also consisted of 108 beads (ten decades
for Ave Maria, and eight units for Pater Noster)

But
why is the rosary called a rosary - a rosarium? Where do the roses come
in?
The correct explanation, it seems, was first given by the German
Indologist, A.F. Weber (1825-1901). To understand the Latin term one must
first identify the original Sanskrit:

The
Sanskrit is japa-mālā, i.e. a string or garland, mālā, for prayer, japa-.
This compound noun is well-attested in Sanskrit. If a small change is
made, we arrive at japā-mālā (with the long a = ā), which is an entirely
different story. Sanskrit japā- means a "rose", which has
nothing at all to do with japa, which, as said, means "prayer"
or , more precisely, "mumbling". It is therefore obvious that
the Latin rosarium is a translation of the Sanskrit japā-mālā - not of
the "correct" japa-mālā. This does not mean that those who
coined the Latin rosarium simply misunderstood the Sanskrit
japa-mālā. Perhaps they simply found the Sanskrit japā-mālā more
"poetical", more charming.

In
any case, the original meaning of the rosarium is only clear when the
Sanskrit japa-/japā-mālā be kept in mind. It is easy to see that the
translation would not work in the opposite direction: from Latin rosarium
there is a straight way back to japā-mālā, but not to japa-mālā. Weber,
it seems, took japā to be a misunderstanding of japa. But, as said, that
is probably not the case. We are rather, as so often in the field of
comparative gospel studies, dealing with deliberate distortions, or
"funny translations". I have already, passim,
pointed out numerous such cases of "deliberate
misunderstandings".

Coming
back to the number of beads, it is known that the figure 108 is
important for the Buddhists in many ways. For instance, the fundamental
Sanskrit version of the Middle Path (madhyamā pratipad) consists of
exactly 4 x 27, or 108 words etc. etc. The number 108 is, moreover, often
found in the number of words or syllables of a given textual unit in the
Greek New Testament. The number 108 thus links up early Christianity with
Indian Buddhism in more than one way. It is a Buddhist
"fingerprint".

More
examples of early Christian cult being influenced by Buddhism will be
found in the learned book of Richard Garbe: Indien und das Christentum. Eine
Untersuchung der religionsgeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge,
Tübingen 1914 (reprinted, with a new Foreword, by Lühe-Verlag,
Süderbrarup 2004), pp. 117- 127. Let me add to Garbe“s observations
by pointing to the noun "catacomb", the meaning of which is as
clear as the etymology is unclear. The Latin cata-cumba is sometimes
explained as formed by dissimilation from Latin cata tumbas, which
, again, is supposed to be from the Greek kata, "down", and
tumbas, acc.plur. of Late Latin tumba, "grave. tomb". I
suggest that we rather have to look for Sanskrit caitya-kumbhas.
The San. caitya- means a "tomb", and kumbhas is common Buddhist
usage for a pot or urn (e.g. in the MPS).

The
Catacombs, the underground cemeteries in or around Rome used by the early
Christians, thus derived their name from Sanskrit caitya-kumbhās (nom.
plural), "tomb-urns". This hypothesis does, of course, not
exclude that the Sanskrit, later on, was assimilated to a Greek-Latin
compound - kata-tumbas, or catacumba(s). At that point, as natural, the
Sanskrit original had been forgotten. The Latin-Greek compound sounds, to
my ear, like yet another "funny translation".

A funny translation, for sure, is involved when we finally look at
the tiara, the Pope“s triple crown. Tddress. I imagine
that Garbe was right (op. cit., p. 117) when he pointed out that
the he Greek is tiara, and the Oriental
origin is generally assumed - the ancient Persian heaetymology has to be found in Sanskrit (and Pāli) cīvaram, the
Buddhist mendicant“s dress. But let us not cause offense to the
Holy Father by following this historical trace further! Or is there
really any good cause for offense on papal part? After all, the first
Pope, PeTRoS, was no other that PuTRaS, the first disciple, known
to all Buddhists as Sāri-Øputras. He, too, wore his cīvaram - but, true,
not on the top of his head!

Dr. Chr. Lindtner
September 27, a.D. 2010.

The
Mysterious Comforter (paraklźtos) of John

Once
the MPS (part of the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya, MSV) and the Lotus
(SDP) have been identified as the two main Buddhist sources of the
four NT gospels, it is not difficult to identify the original
behind the "mysterious" Comforter", or para-klźtos,
mentioned by John 14:16; 15:26; 16:7; and 1 John 2:1.

From
these NT passages we learn that Jesus promises his disciples that his
father, God, will give them another paraklźtos; that he, Jesus, will send
to them from the Father, God, and that the paraklźtos will come only
after the departure of Jesus.

In 1
John 2:1 this mysterious paraklźtos is identified with Jesus Christ,
being with the Father. The other gospels do not mention the paraklźtos.
This is all we have. The Latin is either paraclitus, which is not
helpful, or advocatus, misleading, as will be seen. The Buddhist source
is obvious - it is MPS 41.2 (ed. Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951, p. 386). The
Lord Buddha comforts the monks by saying that once he has passed away
there will be another teacher, or refuge (nihsaranam).

This
teacher or refuge is the Prāti-moksas, that the Lord has pointed out to
the monks twice a month. The Prātimoksas is the name of the set of rules
or precepts Buddhist monks have to follow. Buddhist scholars, for various
reasons (style, language etc.) , agree that the Prātimoksas belongs to
the early strata of Buddhist literature. The etymology of the noun
Prāti-moksas (Pāli pātimokkha) is unclear. The usual Tibetan translation
is so sor thar pa, suggesting "individual release".

The
meaning of the term is, however, clear from the context: Normally, the
Lord is the teacher who gives the rules etc. for monks (and, later, nuns)
to abide by. Once the person, the Lord as a teacher is no longer there,
the set of rules will serve as replacement, as substitute.

John
14:15 confirms that the para-klźtos has to do with "rules",
entolas (acc. plur.). Now, the NT gospels are not addressed to Buddhist
monks, but to common people, Jews etc., in general - lucky people,
poor in spirit, who will win the kongdom of god, or heaven (i.e. the
Christian nirvānam). Thus it would be quite wrong to expect a Greek
version of the entire Prātimoksas. The term para-klźtos thus
necessarily becomes vague, or general, compared to the strict set of regulations
and precepts that are so characteristic of the Buddhist Prātimoksas
in its numerous recensions.

In
the Sermon on the Mount there are several echoes of the Prātimoksas, to
which I shall come back elsewhere. English translations include
"Helper", "Comforter", etc., but thanks to the
Buddhist original we see that "Replacement",
"Substitute" comes closer to the meaning intended in both
sources. This, again, may be helpful for understanding the original
meaning of the term Prāti-moksas. San. prati not only has a distributive
sense ("individual", as the Tibetan so sor has it), but
can also mean "instead of". Along with a noun for a
"nose", for instance, it comes to mean "an artificial
nose" - a new nose (artificial) instead of the old (natural) one.
San. moksas surely means "liberation, release". In a compound
with prati becoming prāti, it acquires the sense of a release instead of
the normal one - the one provided by the Lord as a teacher of precepts.

The Prātimoksas
thus comes to carry the sense of a body of precepts serving as a teacher
of liberation when the real teacher has passed into final nirvānam. San.
Prāti-moksas, just as Greek para-klźtos, thus means "the
personification of the precepts as a teacher replacing the real one once
he has passed away". In other wordsØ- The Preceptor (to retain the
masculine noun) serving as a substitute, or Replacement, for the original
one.

Actually,
the basic idea is quite simple, and fundamental to the Lotus: The sūtram
contains the words of the Lord. Once the Lord has passed away, we are
left with his words in the sūtram. The sūtram thus embodies the Lord. The
cult of the Lord is replaced by thge cult of the sūtram. The cult of the
sūtram finds its culmination in the recitation of the title of the
sūtram. This why there are so many puns of the title of the Lotus - as I
have already pointed out in my book Geheimnisse
um Jesus Christus.

I
need not add that just as one can conceive Christianity without the
mysterious para-klźtos, thus one cannot conceive (early) Buddhism
without Prāti-moksas. In other words: NT must here have been influenced
by Buddhism - not the other way around. So the identifiaction of the
paraklźtos is also important for the problem of relative chronology.

Dr.
Christian Lindtner
September 17, a.D. 2010.

The
Middle Path of Matthew 5:3-10

It
must be due to simple ignorance that scholars have overlooked the obvious
fact that the eight Beatitudes of Matthew 5:3-10 are based on the eight
virtues (or dharmas) that lead to Nirvāna. The Sermon on the Middle
Path (MP) leading to Nirvāna was the first major sermon given to the five
disciples of Tathāgata, just as the Sermon on the eight
"beatitudes" leading to the kingdom of Heaven,
ouranos. Heaven, was the main topic of the first sermon addressed
by Jesus to his disciples surrounded by five groups of people. The
setting is thus exactly the same: The Lord was speaking about eight
virtues, factors or circumstances leading to the same goal. Once again,
Jesus therefore is a Tathāgata in disguise, and, as usual, the authors of
the gospels did their job by way of deception. Whether one likes it or
not, the NT gospels are plagiary, or pirate copies. (This genre was not
uncommon in those days, cf. e.g. Eduard Stemplinger, Das Plagiat in der
griechischen Literatur, Leipzig 1912/1990.)

Let us first have a brief look at Matthew 5:3-10 from a more formal point
of view. It consists of two numerically equal units: 3-6 consist of 18+18
= 36 words. Here, verses 3-4 consist of 12+6 words, and verses 5-6
of 8+10 words, i.e. 2 x 18 words. In the second part, verses 7-8
consist of 6 + 10 words, whereas verses 9-10 consist of 8 + 12
words, giving us again the sum of 2 x 18 = 36. It is quite obvious that
here, as always, Matthew carefully counted the words. Matthew also
counted the syllables: The first part consists of exactly 90 syllables,
or 5 x18 syllables. The second part, verses 7-10, consists of 98
syllables, or 5 x 18, with an extra 8 syllables, perhaps intended to
correspond to the number of beatitudes. The ratio of syllables and words
is 188:72, which is 2.61111...(this ratio is highly revealing, see
below!)

His
Buddhist source (SBV, ed. Gnoli, p. 134) also counted the number of
words and syllables in the same fashion: The Buddhist text on the
MP in its Sanskrit version shows the same geometrical structure or
pattern. It consists of a total of 108 words, neatly arranged in four
units each consisting of exactly 27 words. The author of the
Sanskrit MP likewise counted the number of syllables (and even letters!)
, which of course goes to confirm the gematria (textual geometry)
of the words. One level thus supports another. The mutuality excludes
sheer coincidence. With his 2 x 36 = 72 words, Matthew thus
represents two thirds of the original 108 words of the Sanskrit MP text.
The figure 108 is, as known a "holy number" for Christians as
well as Buddhists. It occurs in various contexts, and is ultimately based
on the pentagon or pentagram, characterized by the angles that measure
108 degrees. The pentagon or pentagram represents the divine proportion,
as known. Coming back to the ratio 188:72 in Matthew, we now see that the
divine proportion is involved , for 72 x 1.618.. gives us 116.496, and
116.496 x 1.618 gives us 188.490... The round number 188 was the number
of syllables in Matthew 5:3-10. Matthew thus conceived 5:3-10 as a unit
with the divine proportion (1.618..) as his rod of measure. In the
Sanskrit version of the MP, the Tathāgata addresses the five monks, or
rather, to be precise, the monks belonging to a group of five. The
Sanskrit word is pancakān - an obvious pun on Greek pentagon. In the
Sanskrit MP the divine proportion is also repeatedly reflected in the
ratio of words and syllables.

Let us then have a brief look at the contents of the Beatitudes in
relation to their Buddhist source: Paying attention to textual symmetry,
Matthew starts (v.3) and ends (v. 10) with the statement that the
disciples are "happy" - makarioi - BECAUSE they have or posses
the Kingdom of Heaven - hź basileia tōn ouranōn. There is thus a causal
relationship, not very clearly articulated, between being makarios and
having the basileia tōn ouranōn. The reason is introduced twice with hoti
autōn, six times by hoti autoi. It is clear that the Kingdom of Heaven
somehow replaces the Buddhist idea of Nirvāna.

In
other words, when "Matthew" translated the Sanskrit word
Nirvānam, he chose, first, basileia tōn ouranōn. We here have to look
closer at the noun ouranōn, in the genitive plural. Interestingly, the
Buddhists themselves faced problems with understanding the term
Nirvāna(m), and this we must keep in mind. Sometimes it was taken as
pointing to a peaceful state of mind, without any passions or
worldy concepts. Sometimes it was taken as indicating a place
that could not be grasped or pointed out etc. (See e.g. my book
Master of Wisdom, pp. 320-322.) There was nothing to prevent the Buddhist
monks from splitting Nirvānam up: nir-vānam, as if meaning meaning NO
vānam. Such "funny etymologies" , nirukti, are quite common in Buddhist
Sanskrit texts, and were imitated by the NT Gospels. This is how the
Greek ouranos was chosen - ou-ranos, meaning NO ranōn (Greek -ranōn
thus = San. -vānam). Many similar examples will be found in the
Prajnāpāramitā. (Compare also San. gani-kā, coutesan becoming a certain
woman, gunź tis.)

Among the Buddhists the term Nirvānam always carries a connotation of
peace.
To reproduce this idea, Matthew 5:9 chose the Greek noun eirźno-poios.
This is the only place in the NT where it occurs. He must have had a
special reason for introducing it. One modern translation says: "
Happy are those who work for peace among men" - but such an
understanding misses the point completely. The Sanskrit behind
eirźnopoioi (masc. plural) must be the term nirodha-gāminī, which is an
adjective to pratipad, path, more or less a synonym of mārga(s),
way, path. Here, nirodha- is a synonym of nirvāna-. It means
"leading to Nirvāna/nirodha. So, the idea is that the makarioi are
happy in the sense that they bring about peace (of mind) for themselves.
This means that they ascend to heaven. Once they are in heaven, they are
known as deva-putras, sons of god, or god-sons. And only then does one
understand why Matthew 5:9 introduces the term huioi theou - sons of god.
The Greek huios theou is an exact rendering of Sanskrit deva-putras, son
(putras) of deva, which means god (devas = Lat. deus = Greek theos). The
idea that the disciples of Jesus may become "sons of god" makes
little sense in the context of the NT, or even in the context of
Christianity in general. It does, however, make perfect sense in the
original Buddhist context, where there are numerous sons of god (as among
the Greeks). When Tathāgata passed into final Nirvāna, his
"precious body" somehow went up to the world of Brahmā -
and that world was inhabited by numerous deva-putras. Four of them were
even present at his birth (Gnoli, p. 42). Matthew (5:6 and 10) also
mentions the term dikaiosunź, which can only be a translation of the
Sanskrit dharma(s). From the bilingual Indo-Greek coins we know that
the San. adjective dharmikas (var. spellings) is
rendered by dikaios etc. In Matthew 7:28, the sermon as a whole is
described as a didakhź, which, again can only be Sanskrit desanā.
Likewise, the MP belongs to a group of teachings described as a
dharma-desanā. The dharma-desanā of Tathāgata is thus know to all
Christians in the disguise of the didakhź dikaiosunźs of Jesus - the
false Tathāgata.

To conclude for now: I am, of course, not claiming that the Sanskrit MP
is the only source of the Eight Beatitudes of Matthew. There are, as
known, also Jewish sources. There are beatitudes in the OT, and there are
beatitudes from Qumran (4Q525). They can easily be looked up. In the
Qumran fragments it is Wisdom, sophia, that is praised for bringing about
beatitude. That, of course, is a typical Buddhist idea - prajnā or
jnāna bringing about Nirvānam. To some extent the terms are synonyms.
(This suggests that Qumran also has the same Buddhist MP source!) One of
the most embarrassing problems facing modern theologians is the fact that
they cannot locate the mountain on which Jesus is supposed to have given
his famous sermon. This has even led some to speak of a "theological
mountain" - which must mean a purely imaginary mountain. How can a
man - even Jesus - stand on a mountain that is not on the map! Of course,
Matthew would not want to mention the name of the mountain! The true
mountain, source criticism now informs us, is to be located in
ancient Benares (Vārānasī - Rishivadana).

Yet another observation. If we take Matthew 5:11 into account, we arrive
at nine beatitudes. The disciples will be persecuted, like prophets
before them, says Jesus.
There is also a Buddhist background for this, and it is reflected here in
Matthew:
Among those who listen to Tathāgata, some are positive, others negative.
Those who rejects the Aryans (= Buddhists) will, after their passing
away, turn up in hell among the inhabitans of hell.(Very nicely, San.
nārakas becomes Greek nekros.) Those having a correct view of the
Aryans, will turn up among the gods (deva) in the world of Heaven -
svarga-loka (Gnoli, p. 118, 158 etc.). The technical phrase āryānām
apavādakāh, eight syllables, is rendered by Matthew 5:11 as kai eipōsin
pan ponźron, also eight syllables.

For
the Buddhist source of such warnings of the Lord, one also has to
turn to the Lotus. If one collects the various passages on persecution in
the NT, it will be seen that nearly all of them can be traced back to the
Saddharmapundarīkasūtram - the Lotus or SDP. Jesus, in other words, was
speaking to Buddhist missionaries actively propagating the Dharma-desanā
among the Jews. But also, as just pointed out (Gnoli, p. 118, p. 158),
to those who as āryānām anapavādakāh svargaloke devesūpapadyante.
So, as usual, Matthew combines several Buddhist and Jewish sources.

Let
me finally come back to 108 - the holy number of the Buddhists. As
pointed out, Matthew 5:3-10 consists of 72 words, or two thirds of 108,
the number of words in the Sanskrit MP (Gnoli, p. 134). But our story
does not end here. Matthew 5: 11 consists of 16 words, and
5:12, the final verse, consists of 19 words, adding up to 35 words for
these two final verses. Adding 72 and 35 we arrive at a total of
107 words - whereas we would expect a total of 108 words. It is
thus not quite impossible that the textus receptus of Matthew
(Nestle-Aland etc.) has to be emended accordingly. However, I think
that the number 107 (rather than the expected 108) was intended by
Matthew. By letting this textual unit consist of 107 words he managed to
place three words right in the middle, viz. makarioi hoi eirźnopoioi
(verse 5:9a) - happy are those who bring about eirźnź- where eirźnź
therefore translates the nirvānam of his Buddhist source. There is
special focus on the word eirźnź, since it is the first word in the
second half of the textual unit of 107 words. Matthew is saying: Look at
the word eirźnź! So we have two different words for the goal of the
Buddhist path - first heaven, then peace. This technique of drawing special
attention to a fundamental idea of a given textual unit was also used by
Luke.

Thus,
H.J. de Jonge made the important observation that in Luke 2:41-51a, a
pericope of exactly 170 words, the word "in the middle",
mesō (in v. 46) is the 85th word, and the phrase "in the middle of
the teachers", en mesō tōn didaskalōn, therefore forms the
mathematical centre of the pericope. (See, M.J.J. Menken, Numerical literary
techniques in John, Leiden 1985, p. 18 for ref.). Buddhist
texts on dharma, as said, make a distinction between two ideals - that of
nirvānam, and that of a pleasant rebirth in heaven, svargas.

This
distinction is reflected in Matthew when he uses the two terms eirźnź and
ouranos. Both are obtained by the practice of dharma - Greek dikaiosunź.

For long, I was unsure about the Sanskrit original behind the Greek
makarios. One could think of kalyānas, sukhin, tustas etc. There are many
synonyms. But we must stick to the context in question. Matthew mentions
makarioi eight (+ one) times. He places it right in the middle along with
the Buddhist eirźnopoioi, as pointed out above.

In
the Buddhist MP text only one word appears eight times - namely
samyag/samyak, the "correct" view, speech etc. Obviously, the
eight Buddhist samyak-s become the eight Christian makarioi. The original
consonants are retained: S-M-K. The eight happy ones of Jesus were thus
originally the eight correct modes of behaviour of Tathāgata. By
following this eight-fold path one arrives at Nirvāna or svarga - eirźnź
or ouranos. (For more on the "Christian Nirvāna", cf. Erich
Dinkler, EIRENE:
Der urchristliche Friedensgedanke, Heidelberg 1973. Buddhist
influence is not limited to the NT.) This was the topic of the first
sermon of Tathāgata aka Jesus. The sermon took place on a mountain near
Benares - the "theological mountain" of Christian
theologians. It was the first dharma-desanā of the mythical Jesus. What
he had to say was something he had somehow discovered or experienced at
the river - Matthew 3:15. Exactly as the Bodhisat(t)va discoved his
Dharma at the river.

Jesus
never really makes it clear, WHERE, on the map, this odd kingdom of
heaven (or of god) is to be located. But I have already pointed out
elsewhere, that the kingdom of heaven must have been Kapilavastu, where
Tathāgata spoke to Brahmā, Sakra(s), Kubera(s) and the other sons of god.
They appear in the disguise of Abraham, Isaak and Iakōbos in Matthew 8:11
(Gnoli, p. 196). And in the NT Kapila-vastu appears as Kaphar-naoum,
Matthew 8:5 etc. We now also understand why the NT speaks not only only
of Heaven, but also of the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, to
the same effect. Tathāgata was the son of the king of Kapilavastu. This
king was addressed as "deva", "king". The Kingdom of
God is therefore the kingdom of the king of Kapilavastu, the father of
Sākyamuni(s), or Tathāgata(s), the ksatriyas (= ho khristos). At the same
time, Kapilavastu is surely a mythical kingdom, located on the
slopes of the Himalaya mountains. It is up there in the sky, almost in heaven.
So, what Jesus is saying is that his disciples will be happy when the end
up in the mythical kingdom of Kapilavastu along with the other
devaputra-s. In this way he is using skilful means, upāya-kausalyam, even
"tricks", to convert common people to the Dharma. For the same
reason, of course, he charges his disciples that they should tell no man
that he was the Christ , Matthew 16:20. But as historians we conclude:
The first part of the Sermon on the Mount is, therefore the NT
version of the Middle Path. Buddhist Nirvāna is found in the very middle.

Dr. Christian Lindtner
September 2, a.D. 2010

The
Anointing at Bethany - Matthew 26:6-13 par

When
the authors of the NT gospels composed their work, they did so by
combining bits and pieces meticulously compiled from different
sources in different languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin and - above all -
Sanskrit. In so doing they followed certain rules - the so-called middoth
cherished by learned rabbis - even to this day. Here and there they had
to add a few words of their own, e.g. conjunctions such as
kai, "and". But even indications of time and place were copied
directly from Buddhist sources. They always carefully counted the number
of words and syllables, reflecting their deep interest in gematria. The
Buddhists shared this interest in gematria, and the background is, of
course, Greek. Already in the OT we see that the Septuaginta is based on
Greek textual geōmetria - from which we have gematria.

Nearly
all the motives found in the NT gospels can be found in other ancient
sources - healings, walking on water, flying in the air, resurrection
from the dead etc. etc. Scholars have already long ago traced most of
these to Buddhist, Egyptian, Greek and other sources etc. In spite
of its age, Carl Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche
Erklärung des Neuen Testaments, Giessen 1924 (repr. 1973)
still provides a qualified discussion of most of the parallels.

Our
task as philologists is clear: We want to look over the shoulders
of "Matthew" and his colleagues as they were sitting there in
their workshop at the table compiling and pasting together bits and
pieces from various sources, as said, in various languages.

The
Hebrew sources have been collected by Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck
in their indispensable Kommentar
zum Neuen Testament; and for the classical sources we have
the Old and the New Wettstein - as far as it goes. Wettstein, when he
published his Novum
Testamentum Graecum, Amsterdam 1751/52, collected about 30000
parallels from Greek and Latin authors. Der neue Wettstein, which is
being published by Udo Schnelle and Manfred Labahn in Halle continues
this important work. The first volume, being a commentary on Mark,
presents about 1300 texts from Hellenistic authors. The rules according
to which the NT gospels were fabricated may be found in Hermann L:
Strack“s book: Introduction
to the Talmud and Midrash, New York 1959. What is stilled
needed to complete the picture of the NT sources is a set of reference
volumes collecting the Buddhist sources of the NT.

It
goes without saying that it follows from source criticism that Jesus, the
hero of our story, is a literary figure, like Donald Duck, not at
all a historical person, like Augustus.

The episode of the Anointing at Bethany is reported by all four
evangelists, with significant variants: Matthew 25:6-13; Mark 14:3-9;
Luke 7:36-50, and John 12:1-8.
The Lord is staying in a house in Bethany (not mentioned by Luke). A
certain woman, a sinner (hamartōlos) comes to him with an alabaster
jar filled with an expensive perfume (muron barutimon), which she then
pours on his head etc. The motive of a woman bringing precious perfume to
the Lord so that its fragrance spreads all over town, has been taken from
another Buddhist text, closely related, in fact, to the MPS, the
Avadānasatakam (see H.W. Schomerus, Ist die Bibel von Indien abhängig?, München
1932, p. 172). Here the woman with the sandal salve falls down at the
feet of the Lord, and prays that she will be reborn as a man. The motive
of the fragrance that spreads all over town has left its scent in John
12:3:" The sweet smell of the perfume filled the whole house."

But
the main Buddhist source is, as so often, the Mahāparinirvānasūtram 12:4 par.
(ed. Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951, p. 188). Here it is the famous courtesan
(ganikā) Āmrapāli who comes and serves a meal to the Lord and his
disciples, the monks. The food, with which she serves them, is
described as sucinā pra-nītena (instrumental case). She serves it
"with her own hand".

Matthew
speaks of a muron that is barutimon - a perfume (oil) that is very
precious. Mark speaks of a muron (made) of nard that is pure (and) very
expensive. Luke only mentions the perfume, muron. John has a muron of
nard that is pistikź and polutimos. The nard, also mentioned by Pliny et
al., is the name of an Indian plant used for perfume (Nardus spica
Valeriana; Sanskrit naladam). The San. pra-nītena (four syllables) is
rendered by baru-timon (Matthew) , by polu-telźs (Mark), and by poly-timos
(John) - three variant renderings, equally valid, of one and the
same original San. adjective.

It
should be noted that the San. combines the two adjectives without a word
for "and". The Greek of Mark and John imitatates the asyndeton.
The rare pistikos, only given by Mark and John, is a perfect rendering of
San. sucinā (instrumental case of suci-). In normal Greek pistikos means
"reliable, trustworthy". The context suggests "pure"
- which is confirmed by the San. original, which, in fact, simply means
"pure".

This
all goes to show that Mark and John used the same source as Matthew, but
also that they used it independently. In particular, they all struggled
with the San. adjective pra-nītas (mask. nom.). They offered three
different versions, Luke left it out.

There
are, moreover, several puns on the name of the celebrated courtesan from
Vaisālī(later becoming Vézelay of Mary Magdalene in France!) ,
Āmra-pāli-ganikā:
1. The murou in all four evangelists, has a pun on āmra.

2.
The gunź hź-tis, a certain woman, in Luke contains a pun on gani-kā
(where -kā is taken as if a pronoun, still acc. to middoth). -
Luke“s en tź polei hamartōlos, in the town, is clearly an echo of
-pāli and āmra-pāli(s) - with t for p in - tōlos.

3.
The apōleia in Matthew and Mark is yet another pun on her name.

When
John mentions Lazaros, this name is a pun on Licchavis, with whom
Āmrapāli is explicitly associated. John is also the only evangelist here
to identify the woman as Mariam - i.e. as Āmram (accusative form), the
"Mango girl".

According to Jesus, the woman poured perfume over his body in order to
prepare it for burial ahead of time. That is, of course, a ridiculous
explanation for her odd behaviour, but it shows nicely what kind of
paradoxes one can run into when combining several different sources as
the evangelists did here, as elsewhere.

But
for the oil in connection with the burial - or rather: cremation - of the
Lord, they again used the same Buddhist source - the Mahāparinirvānasūtram.
The same source also has the Lord explain to his disciples how they have
to prepare for his cremation. Since episodes from the MPS are attested in
Buddhist art dating from B.C., there can - if only for this reason - be
no doubt about the priority of the sources. As I have already pointed
out, the 46 syllables of Luke 10:38 were also based on the same source,
Mahāparinirvānasūtram 10:3 = 11:1 and 15:4 - cf. my Geheimnisse um
Jesus Christus, p. 111 for some details.

John
12:6 mentions the thief and the rare glōssokomon, far too freely
translated as "money bag". This refers to the evil monk who,
during the last meal of the Lord, stole a loha-karotakam, a bowl of
copper (or gold, or iron), as mentioned in MPS 26:16. John“s
explanation of the behaviour of the thief is different. He, the traitor,
wants to sell the salve so that he can steal the (ridicously) large
amount of money it brings. In the Buddhist original the monk steals
the bowl because he is an evil monk. In the Buddhist original the theif
becomes a traitor by stealing. In John he alrady is a traitor, who also
wants to steal.

It
is a great pity that authors still publish books about Mary
Magdalene, passing over the direct Buddhist sources as if they did
not exist (cf. e.g. Margaret Starbird, Magdalene“s
Lost Legacy. Symbolic Numbers and the sacred Union in Christianity,
Rochester, Vermont 2003). Please note that some of the observations here
made, were first published in The
Adyar Library Bulletin 64 (2000), pp. 151-170. A few
repetitions were unavoidable.

Dr. Christian Lindtner
August 11, a.D. 2010

Solving
the unsolved question of Matthew 22:41- 46

All
Buddhists and Buddhologists are familiar with the curious
fact that the Buddha, according to the scriptures, left certain
questions unsolved, undecided or unanswered, e.g. - is the world
eternal or is it not eternal? etc. The reason for his silence could, in
theory, be that he considered such questions irrelevant to
salvation or tedious, or that he simply did not know the answer.
Such questions, dogmas or issues (vastu) are termed avyākrita in
Sanskrit, or avyākata in Pāli. (For references please see e.g. V. Trenckner
et al. (eds.); A
Critical Pāli Dictionary, Vol. I, Copenhagen 1944, p. 484.)

Matthew
22:41-46 provides an important example of a question raised by the Lord,
but in this case neither he himself nor his opponents come up with an
answer. Moreover, modern scholars have failed to come up with a
satisfactory answer to the question posed.
Here, then, we have a nice case of an ayvākrta-vastu in the NT. It
will, therefore, not be superfluous for me to offer a solution to the old
unsolved question raised by Jesus according to Matthew 22:41-46.

The
question is: How can Christ be son and lord of David - i.e. at the same
time? A slight paraphrase will make the paradox more clear: how can Bob
be the father and the son of Bill at the same time? Hard to say!

No wonder,
then, that "from that day on no one dared ask him any more
questions" (Matthew 22:46). No one was able to answer -
apo-krithźnai (pun on San. avyākritāni, nom. plur.- !). But there is an
answer, and the answer is quite simple - provided one knows where to look
for it.

Jesus,
also known as Christ, as Emmanouźl, the Son of David , the Lord etc. knew
the answer, but did not tell: The answer is to be found at the level of
gematria, or textual geometry: The number of Christ, Khristos is 1480.
The number of son, huios, is 680, and the number of Lord, kurios, is 800.
So, since 680 + 800 add up to 1480, he is the Christ, for Khristos is
also 1480. So Christ is son and lord, for 1480 is 1480.

But
there is more: Jesus, or Christ, is said to be son of David, huios Daueid
= 1224. He is also said to be lord of David, kurios Daueid = 1104.

Next
step: 1224 and 1104 add up to 2328. As known, Khristos translates
Messias, which is 656. The Messias is thus 70 + 656 = 726. He is also to
be called Emmanuel, or Emmanouźl (Matthew 1:23), and ho Emmanouźl gives
us 70+644 = 714. When we add 726 and 714, we arrive at 1440.

Together
with 888 for Jesus (familiar to most early Christians), we get 2328
(888+1440). In other words 2328 = Son of David (and) Lord of David =
Jesus, the Emmanuel, the Messias.

Moreover,
2328 is the number of 1480 and 848, which is king, Greek basileus.
Thus the number 2328 provides the geometrical proof that: Christ is the
son and the Lord of David, that Jesus or Emmanuel is the Messias, and
that Christ is a king - i.e. a king of the Jews, or of Israel, of course.

We
may take yet another step: It has been shown that Christ is Lord, or the
Lord, ho kurios = 870. Subtracting 870 from 1480, we are left with 610,
and there is nothing to prevent us from taking 610 as the teacher, Greek
ho didaskalos, 70+540 = 610 (any concordance for the NT
ref.).

Also,
Jesus is the son of Joseph. In other words: Joseph is (the father) of the
teacher, Greek Iōsźph ho didaskalou = 2328. Hence, an angel
also calls Joseph "son of David" (Matthew 1:20). Somehow,
father and son are one, united in (the) Christ.

In
this passage, Christ certainly proves that he is a teacher - a teacher
who teaches at two different levels: Buddhist readers are instantly
reminded of the celebrated stanzas in Nāgārjuna“s
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24:8-10:

"The
Dharma teaching of the Buddhas actually presupposes two realities: the
relative (superficial) reality of the world and the reality in the
ultimate (profound) sense. Those who do not understand the distinction
between these two truths do not understand the truth in the profound
instruction of the Buddha. The ultimate sese cannot be shown without the
support of language; without understanding the ultimate sense nirvana
remains unapproachable." (Quoted from my book Master of Wisdom.
Writings of the Buddhist Master Nāgārjuna, Berkeley, CA,
1986,1997, p. 340.)

The
importance of these simple observations - that have, to the best of my
knowledge not been made before - cannot be overestimated: If the student
of the NT fails to make a sharp distinction between the level of language
and the level of numbers, he cannot understand the truth in the profound
instruction of the Christ.
The distinction, in Mahāyāna, between two truths serves a specific
purpose - the attainment of nirvana.

Is
this also the case in the NT? Perhaps we shall find time to see
what Emmanuel has to say about nirvana at some later point.

Dr. Christian Lindtner
a.D. July 21, 2010.

The
Man in the Clouds

According
to a fresh poll, no less than 41% of all Americans believe that Jesus is
still alive , and that the Son of Man - who is also
considered son of God, and son of Joseph, a carpenter - will return
before the year 2050.

If
asked, WHERE, exactly, old man Jesus abides right now, the
answer would probably be: Up there in the clouds - which is what the NT
teaches in so many words and wants us to believe. Google,
please, for fanciful images of Jesus in the clouds!

Of
course there is no man really to be seen by any human eye, by any
telescope etc. up there in the clouds. It is all poetical fancy, as when
Zeus, according to the Greek myth, formed a cloud in the image of
Hera, whereupon Ixion embraced her. Thus Kentauros - the Buddhist Gandharvas
- was born. Gods that appear in clouds is not an unusual motive in
the ancient religions. The myth of Jesus in the clouds can be derived
from the corresponding Buddhist myth (SBV, p. 41 etc.)

In
Sanskrit literature there is a device called madhyama-pada-lopa
- the loss (lopa) of a word (pada) in the middle (madhyama), i.e. in the
middle of a given compound. It is a great pity that Christian
theologians, when dealing with the highly obscure notion of the holy
spirit - hagion pneuma - are unaware of this fact which is reflected in
the Greek rendering of the Sanskrit.

The
Buddhist myth tells us that Queen Māyā, the mother of the
Bodhisattva, saw a white elephant descending and entering her womb
. The white elephant is a common metaphor for a white cloud in
Indian poetry (a fact that Buddhists unfortunately seem to have
overlooked). The cloud was driven by the wind. The blow of the wind
sets the cloud in motion. Matthew copied the Buddhist myth leaving out
the cloud and the blow , thus creating great confusion in the minds
of generations to come. As usual, the confusion is intended.

The
Christian myth is a copy of the Buddhist myth: First, we have the
young god up in heaven.He is a deva-putra - a son (putra) of God (deva).
Next, God decides to send him down to earth, in the form of a man,
to teach the masses a few lessons about Dharma, or righteousness. The
vehicle used for bringing the deva-putra down from heaven to earth
is a cloud - and that cloud is driven by the blow of the wind - how else?
The Sanskrit runs: megho...māruta-vega-preritas, i.e a cloud
(megha) driven (preritas) by the blow, or power (vega) of the
wind (māruta).

So,
Jesus , the deva-putra (alias Daueid-putra), enters the womb of his
virgin mother. She is obviously a virgin, for the father of her son is
merely a cloud driven by the wind of God. Hence the NT also
identifies God with wind (John). A wind called
"holy", for it is a rather special wind. The blow of the
wind is left out by way of madhyama-pada-lopa, leaving us only with the
mysterious cloud. Later on, Matthew 4:1, her son goes to the desert
"in the wind" - i.e. transported by yet another cloud driven by
the wind.

If one
checks all the passages dealing with wind and clouds in the NT in this
light, it is clear that Jesus, exactly like the Buddhist original, uses
clouds driven by wind in precisely the same way that we use
cars etc. driven by e.g. diesel engines etc. The book of Daniel
7:13 is another source for the same idea that likewise inspired the NT :
"I beheld in the night vision, and, lo, one coming with the clouds
of heaven as a son of man..." The cloud here looks like a man.

The
god responsible for the movements of the cloud is, of course, as any
Greek schoolboy immediately would recognize, no other than Zeus, the king
of men and gods, the heavenly father, called , already by Homer,
nephelź-geréta, "the cloud-gatherer".
The son of Man, who is also the son of God,the wind, descends from
heaven in the form of a cloud. He is a messenger from Zeus. The
cloud that looks like a man is also a king, according to the Buddhists
source, according to Daniel and according to the NT.
The myth of the king descending from heaven in the form of a cloud is, as
said, a very common motiv in Hellenistic religious syncretism. The
kingdom of the heavens, said to be near, simply refers to Jesus, the
cloud that looks like a man that can speak, move around etc.

Sometimes
were are told that the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, or that the
lamb of god is a symbol of Jesus Christ. That, however, is not really the
case. Once we recall that the dove as well as the lamb are white, we are
obviously again dealing with white clouds. The white dove = cloud can
hardly be distinguised from the wind (pneuma) that carries it, and the
white lamb = cloud can, likewise, hardly be distinguished from from God,
who is defined as wind, again pneuma. So the dove and the cloud are not
at all symbols. Just as we can see a man in a cloud, thus we can see a
dove or a lamb. All of the iamges are but clouds, and it takes a cloudy
mind to take them for more than that.

In Matthew 17:5 we have another nice case of a cloud that creates
confusion. He mentions a cloud that is said to be bright, phōteinź. The
voice of god is heard from that cloud. The voice, we now know, is the
sound of Homer“s nephelź-geréta. Peter offers to make three
tabernacles - for protection from the rain, we may add, in the light of the
Buddhist source.

The
Buddhist source (CPS § 6; see my Hīnayāna, Copenhagen 1998, p. 26)
speaks af a cloud that is a-kāla. Sanskrit a-kāla can mean either bright
(not black), or out of season. Matthew deliberately prefers the
"wrong" correct rendering, in order to confuse his
reader. The original idea is that suddenly (out of season)
a cloud , full of rain, appears in the sky. Hence "Peter"
offers to made a shelter, i.e. to protect Jesus and his visitors from the
rain.

Why
Peter offers to make huts for protection can only be understood once one
is aware of the original Buddhist source. Matthew fails to mention the
rain. Luke 9:33, well aware of the Buddhist source, adds that Peter was
"not knowing what he said". If one only knows the NT, one does
not understand Peter“s motive. Peter did not know the motive of his own
action - for he did not know the Buddhist source.

The Cloud messenger (Megha-dūta) is the title of a famous Sanskrit
poem by Kālidāsa. Should the reader wish to enjoy some nice Sanskrit poetry
about clouds that may serve as vehicles for fanciful messages, its study
is warmly recommended. Buddhists - as well as their Christian imitators -
often claim that we should "love all living beings" - perhaps
with the exception of the infidels. If so, one wonders why priests still
fail to make clear distinctions between myth and reality, between real
and imaginary - for surely, to love other human beings is not to
confuse other human beings - or how?

Dr. Christian Lindtner
a.D. June 28, 2010

The
five thousand of Matthew 14:21 par.

Our
source criticism has already demonstrated that the more than five hundred
brothers of 1 Corinthians 15:6 were invented by combining two different
Buddhist sources: one that spoke of five hundred Buddhist monks present
at the cremation of the body of Tathāgata, and one that spoke of the more
than five hundred laymen that had recently passed away.

But
what, then, about the 5000 men, beside women and children, mentioned by
Matthew 14:21? And what about the five loaves and that which
remained over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full?

To
find the answer, we must identify the source, and the source is to be
found in the second chapter of the Lotus - the Saddharmapundarīkasūtram
(SDP). I here refer to the translation of H. Kern.

The
assembly of the Lord consists, on the one hand, of twelve hundred Arhats
headed by Ājnāta-Kaundinya (head of the group of the first five
disciples) (Kern, p. 34) and, on the other hand, of five thousand proud
monks, nuns, and lay devotees of both sexes (p. 38; repeated on p. 44).
The five thousand men and women leave the assembly, and the twelve
hundred, headed by the five, are thus left behind in the assembly.
With this image in mind, it is easy to see how Matthew, Mark and Luke
handled their Buddhist source, i.e., in this case, the SDP.

In
Matthew 14:15 the disciples wanted to send the multitudes away. In the
SDP the five thousand proud monks and nuns actually did leave the
assembly. Once they had left the assembly, , that which remained over of
the broken pieces, were "twelve baskets full" The twelve
hundred Buddhist disciples have thus been transformed into twelve baskets
full.

The
five Buddhist disciples (Ājnāta-Kaundinya and the other four) are
transformed into five loaves. According to Mark 6:43-44, the men
that ate the loaves were five thousand. The Lord sends them away (Mark
6:45).

Luke
6:15 has the curious remark, that they wish to make Jesus a king, but
that he withdrew. The backgroud for this is again the same chapter of the
Lotus (Kern, p. 58), where the Lord says: "I declare that I am the
king of the law (dharmarāja); I am urging others to enlightenment, but I
am here without disciples."

The
Lotus repeatedly sanctions the employment of symbolic or code
language (Kern, p. 59): "They have spoken in many mysteries; hence
it is difficult to understand (them). Therefore try to understand
the mystery (sandhā; sandhāya etc.) of the Buddhas, the holy masters of
the world;forsake all doubt and uncertainty: you shall become Buddhas;
rejoice!" Only insiders, i.e. the closest disciples know the code.

The
modern reader of the feeding of the five thousand is, of course, left
deeply mystified.
That he is left mystified is according to the book, i.e. in accordance
with the message of the SDP. To solve the mystery, one must identify the
source.

The
two fish that are eaten but still survive has another obvious
Buddhist source to which I shall come back later. (Pieces of flesh
of two fish are eaten, but the fish survive, and the next day the two
fish provide yet another meal etc. etc.) Mark 6:39-40 is significant for
the distributive compounds "sumposia-sumposia" and the
"prasiai-prasiai", only to be found here. They are often
translated by "into groups" and "in rows".
It is a great pity that our New Testament grammars have failed to
identify them as Sanskritisms: samghāt samgham...pūgāt pūgam ( from the
MPS, passim, cf. my paper "Some Sanskritisms in the New Testament
Gospels", in The
Adyar Library Bulletin 65 (2001)). It shows that Mark now and
then used the Buddhist source independently.

Gematria
of the Lotus (Saddharmapundarīkasūtram)

In order
to understand the Greek of the NT, one must be able to read Sanskrit,
and, likewise, in order to understand the Sanskrit of several Buddhist
texts composed in that language, one must know ancient Greek. The reason
for this is simple: Just as the NT often depends on Buddhist sources,
thus Buddhist texts often depend on Greek sources. These scholars we
bilingual, they knew Greek and Sanskrit.

Here is a passage from the Saddharmapundarīkasūtram (SDP), or Lotus (Kern
ed. p. 391; Wogihara ed., p. 331; Vaidya ed. p. 231). In the translation
of Kern (p. 367), with a few additions:

"Therefore,
young men of good family (kula-putras), you should after the complete
extinction of the Tathāgata, with reverence keep, read, promulgate,
cherish, worship it. And wherever on earth, young men of good family,
this Dharmaparyāya shall be made known, read, written, meditated,
expounded, studied or collected into a volume, be it in a monastery or at
home, in the wilderness or in a town, at the foot of a tree or in a palace,
in a building or in a cavern, on that spot one should erect a shrine
(caityam) in dedication to the Tathāgata. For such a spot must be
regarded a a terrace of enlightenment (bodhi-mandas); such a spot must be
regarded as one where all Tathāgatas &c. have arrived at supreme,
perfect enlightenment; on that spot have all Tathāgatas moved forward the
wheel of the law (dharma-cakram); on that spot one may hold that all
Tathāgatas have reached complete extinction."

The
idea, in brief, is: The SDP is a dharma-parable. It may be recited,
written (or drawn, San. likhyeta), considered, copied, explained
etc. on a given spot of earth, in a given place. A caityam, or sanctuary,
shrine, should then be made in honour of the Lord - Tathāgatam
(accusative), for this spot is the bodhi-temple (mandas) of ALL the
Tathāgatas. They have been enlightened in that spot of earth. Moreover,
all the Tathāgatas have turned the Wheel of Dharma, the dharma-cakram, in
that place.

To understand this curious passage, it will be helpful to visualize the
situation as a whole. First, it says that the SDP is a dharma-parable.
The San.for parable is paryāyas, and, as I have pointed out elsewhere,
San. paryāyas, is translated in the NT by the Greek parabolź. Greek
parabolź, means, in geometry, application. In other words: the SDP is
being drawn on a spot of earth, in the learned sand, as the Greek scholar
would say.

The
numerical value (psźphos) of Saddharma-pundarīka-sūtram is, according to
the Greek mode of calculation,352 +666+1041 = 2059. The diameter of a
2059 circle is 656, and the radius, of course, 328. The numerical value
of dharma-cakram is 146+182 = 328; and the numerical value of Tathāgatam
(the accusative case as found in the text above) is 656. (For the
Chistians 656 is Messias = 40+5+200+200+10+1+200).

To
sum up: The passage invites the kula-putras, son of good family, i.e.,
the educated reader, to draw a 2059 circle with the 656 diameter of
Tathāgatam, and the 328 radius of dharma-cakram. The San. cakram (here the
neuter, also attested in earlier San. masculine: cakras) clearly
represents Greek kuklos, circle. Once we know Greek, we easily see
that dharma-cakram is 328, that Tathāgatam is 656, that
Saddharma-pundarīka-sūtram is 352+666+1041 = 2059. Furthermore, it is
said that all Tathāgatas have turned the dharma-cakram on that spot of
earth. This means that the 656 diameter of Tathāgatam has turned, i.e.
has drawn the 2059 circle of Saddharmapundarīkasūtram.

What,
then, about the two words caityam and bodhimandas (nominative case)? It
will be observed that the numerical value of caityam is
20+1+10+300+10+1+40 = 382. Likewise, the number of bodhi-mandas is 86+296
= 382. The number 382 must, therefore, be significant in the present
context, i.e. in connection with the drawing - the 2059 circle of SDP
- before our eyes. If we draw Tathāgatas, which is 816, as a
circle, the inscribed pentagon measures 763.62..or 764, which is the sum
of the numerical values of caityam and bodhimandas (i.e. 382 + 382 =
764). The 816 circle with the inscribed 764 pentagon thus tells us that
the caityam which is the bodhimandas, is contained in Tathāgatas. Or, to
the same effect: Tathāgatas contains the caityam and (or: which is) the
bodhimandas.

But
how do we go from the initial 328 radius in 2059 SDP circle to the 382 of
caityam and bodhimandas? First, 328 is the 2 x 164 solar cross in the
514.95 = 515 circle. Four such circles amount to 514.96 = 2059.84, which,
taken as 2059 was, as demonstrated, the number of SDP. The 515 circle contains
the inscribed 464 square. When we subtract one half of 164, i.e. 82, from
464, we arrive at 382, the value of caityam as well as bodhimandas. We
can now easily how the author, who must have known the Greek language as
well as the Greek mode of psźphos, went about: He started out with 328 -
dharmacakram. From that he derived the figure 382. This figure he divided
by five, giving him the image of the 382 pentagon inscribed in the 408.
20.., or 408 circle. Two such circles gave him 816 for Tathāgatas.

The
words of the SDP, in this passage, to sum up, thus operate - as the text
itself often states when it refers to "hidden or symbolic
language (samdhā-bhāsya)" - on two levels. There is a hidden
message. There are, as always in Mahāyāna, two truths. On the
superficial level of words one can translate from one language into
another language. On a deeper level, one must know the numerical value of
each Sanskrit word according to the Greek mode of calculation (psźphos).

All
this was, as I hope to have shown by numerous examples, also know to the
authors of the New Testament. Let me therefore, briefly repeat what I
have pointed out elsewhere:

Revelation
13:18 refers to the number 666, saying that "it is, in fact, the
number of a man" - a-rith-mos gar an-thrō-pou es-tin. These
nine syllables of the Greek represent the nine original syllables of the
Sanskrit of the title: sad-dhar-ma-pun-da-rī-ka-sūt-ram
The total number of syllables, as said, is, in both cases, nine.
Moreover, the number of letters is, in both cases, 23. Each phrase
consists of four different words. The San. counts nine vowels, but the
Greek has ten.

Revelation13:18
does not explicitly identify the man whose number is said to be 666. This
omission has, unfortunately, given rise to endless speculations. In our
view,philological problems must, if possible, be solved in
the light of their sources. The Greek for "man" is anthrōpos
(nominative form). His number is said to be 666. But 666 is the
number of San. pundarīka: 80+400+50+4+1+100+10+20+1 = 666. The
"man" in Revelation 13:18, is, therefore, the Lotus, the
pundarīka. Something is missing! The man has not been fully identified
from the NT point of view. The Greek anthrōpos, man, is 1310. When
we subtract 666 for pundarīka, we are left with 644. We would expect,
from the context, that 644 somehow refers to the hero of the NT, i.e. to
Jesus or Christ (888 or 1480).

According
to the OT quotation in Matthew 1: 23, Jesus will be called Emmanouźl -
but, strangely, the NT never mentions him by that name. We must
thus look for our Emmanouźl on some deeper level, i.e. on the numerical
level. Now Emmanouźl is 5+40+40+1+50+70+400+8+30 = 644. The 1310
"man" that Revelation 13:18 refers to, is, therefore, pundarīka
as Emmanouźl, for 666 + 644 = 1310.

To put
it simply: The Christian saviour (known as Jesus etc.) is
identified with the Buddhist saviour (known as Sākyamuni(s) etc.).
The great hero of the SDP is, of course, Sākyamunis, whose number is 932.
The Lotus is his symbol. Since Emmanouźl was identified with this Lotus,
we would expect that Jesus also was identified with the Lotus, for
Emmanouźl is one of the names of Jesus.

When
we look closer at various passages of the NT, we shall find that our
suspicions be fully confirmed: During the Last Supper, Jesus refers
to his body, Greek sōma, and to his blood, to haima mou. The sōma is
1041, and 1041 is also San. sūtram. And "the blood of mine", to
haima mou, is 932, and 932 is Sākyamunis. The tźs diathźkźs, of the
covenant, that follows (Matthew 26:28) contains a clear pun on San.
Tathāgatasya, of the Tathāgata, i.e. of Sākyamuni(s), both pentasyllabic.
Jesus thus identifies himself with Sākyamuni(s), the main Tathāgata of
the SDP. Jesus is an embodiment of the SDP.

There
is more to the very same effect: When we draw a circle that measures 888
for Jesus (Iźsous), the inscribed Lotus (the Star of David, the hexagram)
measures 1470, but 1470 is the number of the Greek word for the
Lotus, viz. ho lōtos = 70+30+800+300+70+200 = 1470. So we see Jesus as
the Lotus, the Star of David.
Did the authors of the SDP already have this drawing in mind - the
drawing of the Lotus inscribed in a circle? The answer is: yes, they did:
The psźphos of SDP was, as will be recalled, 2059 (or 2059.84) If one
draws a Lotus (as the Buddhists often did) measuring 2059, the circle in
which this hexagram is inscribed measures ca. 1244.

To
be quite precise: the inscribed hexagram measures 6 x
343.306666666...suggesting the number of man: 666. If we add 816, the
number of Tathāgatas (above), we arrive at 2060 or 2059, which is the
number of Saddharmapundarīkasūtram. This Buddhist drawing, therefore,
also identifies Tathāgatas on the basis of a drawing of a hexagram
showing us the stylized image of a Lotus.

Jesus, was, therefore, in several ways born from a Buddhist lotus.

A final point: In the SDP, the Lord Sākyamuni(s) encourages his disciples
to spread the message in writing etc. His disciples are called
Bodhisattvas, Mahāsattvas etc., and kula-putras, i.e.
"family-sons" (often translated freely as "sons of good
family").
The passage from the SDFP quoted above read:

"Therefore,
young men of good family, you should after the complete extinction of the
Tathāgata, with reverence, keep, read, promulgate, cherish, worship
it."

In other words: Once Sākyamuni(s) as passed away, it is up to the
kula-putras to spread the SDP in various ways. The kula-putras is thus
one of the many synonyms of a Buddhist missionary. The psźphos of San.
kula-putras is 451+1081 = 1532. I have already pointed out, again and
again, that Jesus is such a Buddhist missionary in disguise.

The
truth of this observation can now be established from yet another point
of view.
The number of Jesus is 888, and the number of Emmanouźl is 644. Thus
Jesus Emmanouźl is 888 + 644 = 1532. But 1532 is also the number of
kula-putras, a missionary of the Lotus. It was stated clearly, that the
kula-putras was expected to become active AFTER the extinction of
Sākyamunis.

Jesus
Emmanouźl, therefore, was such a kula-putras, who propagated the message
of the SDP - in disguise as the son of God, the son of David etc. etc. He
was, indeed, born in or from a lotus, for all Bodhisattvas are, as
students of Buddhist art are aware, born in a lotus.

Jesus
was also known as Messias, and Messias is 40+5+200+200+10+1+200 = 656.
But, as we have seen, 656 is the diameter of the 2059 circle of the
Saddharmaundarīkasūtram. Thus, Messias, alias Jesus Emmanouźl, was
also born from the Lotus. In various places, the NT would like to have us
believe that Jesus is identical with the Messias mentioned in the OT.

We
can now prove that this belief is, in a strange and unexpected way, quite
true, for since the SDP circle is 2059, and since Jesus is 888, and since
Messias is 656,and since 515 was also established above, it follows that:

The
Rising of the Saints from the Tombs -

Buddhist
Lotus source of Matthew 27:51-53

When
Jesus gave up his spirit, many odd phenomena occurred. One of these,
obviously intended as a sort of evidence for the absurd Christian
doctrine of physical resurrection, is mentioned by Matthew 27: 51-53:
"...and the earth was shaken, and the rocks were rent, and the tombs
were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came
out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy
city, and appeared to many."

The
identity of the bodies of these saints who came out of their graves and
went into the holy city, has always been somewhat of an embarrassment to
even the most naive among modern theologians. One learned Danish
theologian - Mogens Müller - suggests that the reference is to the
prophets and righteous men of the OT. Another theologian, Donald A.
Hagner, admits "that the rising of the saints from the tombs in this
passage is a piece of theology set forth as history."

One
cannot but smile at the opposition or conflict between theology and
history that Hagner here inadvertently expresses. For what he says
is simply that Matthew is not speaking the truth. However, the rising of
the saints from the tombs is not merely a case
of theology, or myth, but a manifest case of plagiary. We have already
seen that "the best and the earliest" evidence for the physical
resurrection of Jesus, and for Christians in general, has been copied by
"Paul" from Buddhist sources- the "more than 500
brethren"
etc. (1 Cor. 15)

And
when it comes to the saints rising from the tombs, we again have a
Buddhist source, namely the celebrated Lotus Sūtra - the
Saddharmapundarīkasūtram, still available in Sanskrit as well as Chinese,
Tibetan etc. Chapter xiv (in the Sanskrit edition, and English
translation of H. Kern; chapter xv in te Chinese version of Kumārajīva;
translated by W.E.Soothill) is entitled: "Issuing of the
Bodhisattvas from the Gaps of the Earth".

Here
are the main points:

The
multitude of Bodhisattvas say to the Lord that they would like to read,
write, worship and devote themselves to the Lotus. But the Lord replies
that this is not necessary, for he already has an enormous number of
Bodhisattvas able to do that.

"No
sooner had the Lord uttered these words than the Saha-world burst open on
every side, and from within the clefts arose many hundred thousand
myriads of kotis of Bodhisattvas with gold-coloured bodies...who had been
staying in the element of ether underneath this great earth close to this
Saha-world. These then on hearing the word of the Lord came up from below
the earth...They cannot be numbered, counted, calculated, compared, known
by occult science, the Bodhisattvas Mahāsattvas who emerged from the gaps
of the earth to appear in the Saha-world. And after they had successively
emerged they went up to the Stūpa of precious substances which stood in
the sky, where the Lord Prabhūtaratna, the extinct Tathāgata, was seated
along with the Lord Sākyamuni on the throne. Thereafter they saluted the
feet of both Tathāgatas, etc., as well as the images of Tathāgatas
produced by the Lord Sākyamuni from his own body..."

From
the Chinese version of Kumārajīva:

"
When the Buddha has thus spoken, the earth...trembles and quakes and from
its midst there issue together innumerable thousands, myriads, kotis of
Bodhisattva-Mahāsattvas...These Bodhisattvas, hearing the voice of
Sākyamuni Buddha preaching, spring forth from below... When these
Bodhisattvas have emerged from the earth, each goes up to the wonderful
Stūpa of the Precious Even (jewels) in the sky, where are the
Tathāgata Abundant-Treasures and Sākyamuni Buddha."

Conclusion:
The saints that issue from the earth are not exactly the prophets etc. of
the OT, but the Bodhisattvas of the Lotus. The cry of Jesus up there on the
cross, was the cry of the Lord up there in the Stūpa in the sky.

The
holy city, to which they went, was the Stūpa up there in the sky. By
comparing the original text of the Lotus, the reader will find many more parallels,
all of them to the effect, that "Matthew" (who has his name
from a famous Buddhist monk) and his consorts copied the Lotus when they
fabricated the legend of Jesus, combining, of course, with bits and
pieces taken from the OT etc.

Christian
readers will, in the interest of historical truth, be happy to know that
all the alleged witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, are , in
fact Buddhist witnesses. Should they not be happy about that, there
is some consolation to be had from yet another fact, namely that all the
Buddhist witnesses are, themselves, also not fact but myth, or
fabrications of vivid Buddhist imagination.

Dr.
Christian Lindtner
a.D. 2010, May 19.

THE
SHROUD OF TATHĀGATAS

Good
for Pope Benedict XVI - the phony successor of the Buddhist
(Sāri-) PuTRaS, alias PeTRoS - that he did not (on May 2, 2010)
outright endorse the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, a manifest
fake, as known by now. Instead, the Holy Father said something about the
Shroud being a "a photographic documentation of the darkest
mystery of faith" - i.e., in plain words, a simple hoax.

The legend, of course, goes back to the Gospels, Matthew 27:57-61
par.

Our Roman impostor would be delighted to know - perhaps
- that parts of the Christian legend can be traced to a
Buddhist source, viz. Mahāparinirvānasūtra (ed. Waldschmidt) 46-49, from
which I will here draw attention to a few points only:

1.The body of Bhagavān (Tathāgata) can only be removed once the
gods have given their permission.
Hence "the rich man from Arimathea", whose name was Joseph,
first has to have the permission of Pilate.
This rich man - Greek anthrōpos plousios - can be identified
as the brāhmanas Dhūmrasa-gotras, MPS 51:1-3. San. brāhmanas
becomes Greek anthrōpos,.
Mark and Luke prefer the translation bouleutźs., which gives the
sense of brāhmanas quite well. -
The Greek apo represents the San. -gotra ("from the family
of"), and Gr. Arimathaias retains all the consonants of San.
Dhumrasa-

2. The body of Bhagavān is wrapped in vihataih karpāsair (instrumental
plur., passim), i.e. cotton bandages that are "not
beaten".
Hence the body of Jesus is wrappen in sindoni (instrumental case of
sindōn), meaning "Indian linen.
Matthew adds that the Indian linen is "clean" -
obviously intended to correspond to the San. adjective avihatair
John 19:40 has the variant - also instrumental plural, as in Sanskrit:
othoniois, from othonion (a loan word from Semitic), meaning linen
bandages..
The motive of John is obvious: he fears the Indian association of sindōn,
the Indian linen.

3. The body of Bhagavān is cremated, but the body of Jesus is not
cremated - for how, if so , could it appear intact a few days
later?
The body of Bhagavān is placed in a coffin with a lid.
The body of Jesus is placed in a grave with a stone serving as
"lid".
Hence, the Buddhist source cannot be followed when it comes to cremation.
Creamtion would render physical resurrection rather complicated.

The reader who takes the trouble to compare the Greek and the Sanskrit,
word by word (while keeping the general context in mind) , will find more
instances of the same sort, all of it to the effect that the Gospel has
been copied from Buddhist " gospel", the sūtram (as if from
su-uktam, well said).

I need not here repeat what has often been said, namely that
Matthew and his Buddhist friends often use the MPS as one of their major
Buddhist sources for the incredible myths of the NT. The MPS is a part of
the MSV, where we also have one of the sources of the Crucifixion
etc. etc.

There
is a careful comparative study of the MPS published by Ernst
Waldschmidt as "Die Überlieferung vom Lebensende des
Buddha,I-II", Berlin 1944-1948.- Waldschmidt, however, never refers
to the New Testament.

Did Benedict XVI ever study the work of Ernst Waldschimdt? It
is known that he supported the publication of a German translation of the
Lotus-sūtra, another important source of the Gospels. If so, he must have
wondered, for Benedict is a learned man.
It would make sense to speak of "the darkest mystery of faith"
when we compare MPS with NT.

Christian Lindtner
a.D. 2010, May 8.

WHO
WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT GOSPELS?

There
are still theologians who claim that all that we read in the New
Testament is "the word of God". Other theologians, more critical
and sceptical , admit that perhaps not all that we read can be ascribed
to God himself. Some things - especially silly things - may be due
to the evangelists. But who were the evangelists? Or more precisely: Who
is responsible for the Greek text of the Gospel according to
Matthew, the Gospel according to Mark, etc.?

I
here assume that the reader is familiar with modern discussions such as
Burton L. Mack, Who
wrote the New Testament?, San Francisco 1995; or Bruce M.
Metzger, The
Canon of the New Testament, Oxford 1987 (and later). None of
these erudite theologians have come to any conclusion about the identity
of Matthew or Mark - to whom I shall here confine my attention.

The
reason they have failed to identify Matthew and Mark is extremely simple
- they have been looking in the wrong place. If you want to pick apples
or flowers, you do not go out in a boat and pick them on the ocean.
Likewise, if you want to identify Matthew and Mark, you want to look for
them in the Mūlasarvāstvādavinaya (MSV) - one of the main sources for the
NT Gospels in general.

The
MSV (p. 5) starts out thus: The Sākyas of Kapilavastu are staying in the
assembly hall of Kapilavastu. They would like to hear more about
their own origins, and invite the Lord to do so. The Lord, however,
does not want to praise himself, and asks his disciple, the Great
Maudgalyāyanas to tell the story of their origins. This
Maudgalyāyanas is sitting in the assembly. He enters a state of trance,
then raises up from that state, and follows the exhortation of the Lord.
He then tells the story much like the one that we have now found in the
Gospel of Matthew (p. 6).

What
he narrates is a sūtram - as if from su-, meaning "good", and
uktam", meaning "said, spken, statement". So, a sūtram can
mean a good statement, a good message - a gospel. The Greek eu-aggelion
is a synonym, it means: good eu-, and aggelion, message"
Theologians often claim that the euaggelion genre is unique, that there
is nothing really comparable in Greek or Hebrew. Sure, but there is
something like it in Sanskrit and Pāli. The Greek simply imitates
the Sanskrit. As said, Maudgalyāyanas then narrates, and what he narrates
can easily be traced in the NT Gospels.

I
have already pointed out in my book Geheimnisse
um Jesus Christus, how Matthew 9:9 is a direct
translation of the Sanskrit found in MSV, p. 6. Matthew 9:9 runs:
"Jesus left that place, and as he walked along he saw a tax
collector, named Matthew, sitting in his office. He said to him,
"Follow me, " and Matthew got up and followed him".

This
is precisely what goes on in the Buddhist source: The venerable
Maudgalyāyanas is sitting in the assembly. The Lord, Bhagavān
speaks to him and asks him to narrate the story of the origin of the
Sākyas. Maudgalyāyanas gets up from trance (samādhi) , and
follows the exhortation.

The
"man named Matthew" is therefore no other than "the
venrable Great Maudgalyāyanas". The story narrated by this Matthew
is, essentially, the story narrated by this Maudgalyāyanas. When the
colophons of the Greek manuscripts describe the text as the
"Gospel according to Matthew", what they mean to say is that
this text is based on a collection of sūtras - good saings - found in the
MSV. The term ev-aggelion, therefore has the same sense as
"scripture" graphź, the synonym used by Paul in 1 Cor. 15: 3
& 4.

We do not have to read many pages of the original Gospel according to
Matthew - i.e. the MSV - before we meet a man, a very young man, who
later became transformed into the evangelist Mark - or Markos (the Greek
form). According to an old well-known Christian legend, poor Mark had a
crooked finger - he was colobodaktulos, i.e. his finger, or fingers, were
short, or maimed. In their usual irresponsible fashion, theologians have
speculated what that is supposed to mean. Did he cut off or shorten
his fingers to avoid military service? Or does it perhaps mean that
his fingers were too short to finish the Gospel transmitted under his
name?

The
explanation is found on p. 57 of MSV. According to the legend, when the
Buddha was still but a young prince, Sanskrit kumāras, he was extremely
strong. Thus, there was a golden bowl, and it was so heavy that not even
horses could pull it. But KuMāRaS only needed to bend his finger ,
or fingers, forming them into a hook. With his fingers serving as a hook
he was then able to snatch the heavy golden bowl and pull it away. The
Sanskrit term for "with his fingers as a hook" is kutilāngulikayā,
and it is extremely rare, perhaps only found here. It is formed
according to the rules of Sanskrit grammar, and there are in the Buddhist
scriptures several other terms formed in the very same way (instrumental
case). The compound is a "real" Sanskrit compound.

Likewise,
the Greco-Latin term kolobo-daktulos. It, too, is extremely rare, found
perhaps only here (and in later passages depending on this passage; for a
discussion see e.g. Holger Mosbech, Nytestamentlig
Isagogik, Copenhagen 1946, p. 178). The Latin form is
colobo-dactylus. The Christian usage clearly depends directly on the
Buddhist usage. The Greco-Latin form was fabricated by a person knowing
Sanskrit. From KuMāRaS we get MaRKoS. Thus Mark - at least here -
was originally no other than Kumāras - the Buddha while still a young
prince. This person cannot possibly be held responsible for having
written the Greek gospel. We also hear that Mark was the interpreter of
Peter. The origin of this legend is from the same passage in the MSV, still
p. 57. It is said that the golden bowl was pulled by kumāras with his
crooked finger(s). The Sanskrit for the bowl is here pātrī. This becomes
Latin Petri (p-t-r). And when the Latin says that he was interpres , that
again is a pun on the Sanskrit pātrī.

To
conclude: Mark was the Buddha as a young prince, and Matthew was one of
the disciples of the Buddha - the one who rose and followed the
exhortation to tell this and many other legends. The general conclusion
is, as always : The Christian gospels are pirate copies of the Buddhist
gospels.

I
started out by asking the question: Who is responsible for the Greek
texts presented to us as the Gospels according to Matthew and Mark? We
can be sure that the Greek texts were not written by Maudgalyāyanas or by
Kumāras.(The same goes for the Sanskrit - it was not written by
Maudgalyāyanas, but about Maudgalyāyanas and about Kumāras.)
And since the names of Matthew and Mark are directly derived from the
Sanskrit, we can also conclude that these two gospels were not composed
or written by these people.

There
is also, as often, an element of hidden humour in all this: Sanskrit
kutila means "crooked", but also "fishy" Thus the
translation kolobo-daktulos suggest that there is something
"crooked" or "fishy" about the figure of Mark. There
can be no doubt that the "evagelists" enjoyed themselkves when
they fabricated the "holy scripture"! They enjoyed themselves
when they deceived their readers. One is reminded of Julian“s remark that
the Christians were motivated by kakourgia - villainy.

According to an early Christian tradition, a certain Pantaenus went to
India, where he found a copy of the Gospel according to Matthew (see the
discussion in Metzger, op. cit., p. 129 f.). It is reported to have
been in Hebrew letters. It was said to have been brought there and left
there - in India - by a certain Bar-tholomew. What are we to make of
that?
The first piece of information is, as we have seen, quite true: The
Gospel of Matthew has its home in India. But what about the second part -
the legend of Bartholomew having brought it there?

The
answer is simple - provided you know the Buddhist sources. Just like the
disciples of Jesus often have more than one name, thus the disciples of
Buddha also have more than one name. Maudgalyāyanas also has other names,
and one of these is indeed one that can be translated as "son",
bar, of thalama.

The
early Christian tradition about Pantaenus going to India, where he found
the Gospel of Matthew said to have been brought there by Bartholomew,
now becomes clear.
Matthew and Bartholomew are the same person - the Buddhist
Maudgalyāyanas.
So what Pantaenus found was the Gosdpel of Maudgalyāyanas - i.e. the MSV,
or parts of it. That should not come as a surprise by now.

When
the Buddhist gospels were eventually translated into other Oriental
languages, it was the MSV version that was regarded as
"canonical". This was the Gospel according to Maudgalyāyanas.
And this was what Pantaenus found in India.

Christian
Lindtner
April 27, a. D. 2010

SIMEON
AND ANNA, ZACHARIAS AND JOHN - Main Buddhist sources of Luke 1-3

It
is a great pity that theologians still can publish
commentaries on Luke without any reference at all to the Buddhist
sources of the initial chapters of that gospel.

Buddhist
sources for the Presentation of Jesus in the temple, Luke 2:22-40,
have been available and known for a very long time. They were
discussed e.g. by Richard Garbe in 1914, and three of my learned friends
have again drawn attention to them in more recent books: Kersten, Thundy,
Derrett.

There
would hardly be any need to draw attention to this issue again
had it not been that the MSV contains important new materials
that have escaped the notice of all previous scholars.

It
will be recalled, that according to Luke, a man called Simeon (Sumeōn) ,
in the temple in Jerusalem, took up the child, to paidion, in his arms ,
and predicted that he - after his own passing away - would be a saviour
and a light to his people etc.

Also
mentioned here is a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanouźl.

The
boy "increased in wisdom". The Buddhist sources are found
in MSV, I, pp. 46-57:

Asita,
a rishi ("seer") and his sister-son (bhāgineya) Nālada live on a
mountain. Here they see the light of the Muni, for when a Bodhisattva is
born, the world becomes illuminated by such a light.

(This
also explains the star seen by the wise men from the East, Matthew 2: a
bodhisattva has been born.)

Later
on they go to Kapilavastu, where Asita takes the Bodhisattva in his hands
(not arms), and predicts that the light of the world will become a
saviour etc., provided he leaves his home at an age of thirty in order to
become a monk.

This
is important - see below!

We
read that the Bodhisattva is endowed with wisdom prajnā (p. 52).

The
father of the Bodhisattva is one of the four kings of the Sākyas - he is
a Sākya-rājas (nominative), Sākya-king.

With
this in mind it is easy to see how the Buddhist source was
"judaized", i.e. combined with extracts from the Old Testament:

Asita
and Nālada are disguised as Jews: Simeon (Sumeōn) and Anna,
daughter of Phanouźl.

When
Simeon took the child - to pai-di-on - in his arms, it was
originally Asita who took the bo-dhi-sat-tva in his hands.

Both
of them then express themselves in verses, not in prose.

The
rendering of Sanskrit bodhi-sattva(s) is nice: The bodhi becomes paidi,
and the Greek to with the final on means "being", which
is also the meaning of the Sanskrit sattva.

(This
"translation" shows the prajnā of the translators, see
below for the meaning of prajnā!)

The
Sanskrit original, of course, knows nothing at all about a Jewish saviour
and light of the world etc.

According
to the Buddhist source (p. 54), the Bodhisattva would leave his home at
an age of 29 years: ekānnatrimsatko vayasā grhān nirgamisyati.

That
is very significant, for in Luke 3:23 we read that Jesus himself was
beginning at about thirty. The word for "was/is
beginning", arkhomenos, has caused problems. Some translators
have left it out, or translated by "was", or by "he began
teaching". But the Greek has nothing about teaching - or anything of
that sort.

It
has already been observed by theologians that this indication of his age
being about thirty is incompatible with the indications given in Luke 1:5
and 2:2, q.v. - The paradox of time is solved once we see
that the paradox is a result of combining entirely different
sources. Also, it is clear that what Jesus "was beginning" is
not to teach, but to leave his home - to become a monk. The Greek, then,
means" starting out (from his home)". But Luke was not at
all interested in Jesus becoming a Buddhist monk. So he just left
his reader asking himself, what Jesus was starting out for.

In
Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6: 2 the pertinent question is cunningly raised:
Where did he get this sophia from?

The
answer, we now know, is that he got his sophia from the prajnā of the
Bodhisattva.

This
wisdom is a very special kind of wisdom, it is a prajnā that expresses
itself in the analysis of words and syllables, we learn MSV, I. p. 52
(artha-pada-vyanjanam prajnayā pratividhyati: by wisdom he
understands meaning-word-syllable).

Now,
what about John - the so-called Baptist, acc. to Luke 1 ?

Once
again the MSV provides us with the answer:

When
the Bodhisattva became a Buddha, the nasty rumour spread that he had
died. His father, the Sākya-rāja, of course became very sad. But the
rumour turned out to be false, and there was naturally a great relief and
joy , Sanskrit ānanda(s).

At
this very moment, a son was born to another Sākya-rāja. What will be his
name, people asked? Of course, his name would be Ānanda - Joy!

In
Luke, Zacharias has a son. People suggest that he, too, be called
Zacharias. But Zacharias and his wife, Elisabeth, insist that he be
called Iōannźs, "John."

In
other words: He could have been called Zacharias, but is calle Iōannźs.

The Buddhist
source is obvious:

Ānandas
(nominative) becomes Iōannźs. The name Zacharias still would
make sense, for Ānandas could - like his cousin, the Buddha
(Sākya-munis) - have become a Sākya-rāja(s) himself.

One must
know that Ānanda means joy, to appreciate the pun on
"joy" in Luke 1:14. (Greek khara translates
San. ānandas, joy.)

But
Ānanda did not become a king. He was chosen to become the personal
servant of the Buddha - his upasthāyaka(s).

This
technical term, upa-sthāyakas in Greek becomes apo-stolos

Much
has, of course, been written about the use and meaning of the Greek
apostolos. But it has not been noticed before that this noun in some
cases is a direct, and very good, translation of the Sanskrit upa-sthāyakas.

What
do we learn from all this?

A
few buzz words, the general context, and our knowledge of the MSV as a
source of the NT permit us to conclude that Luke has combined Buddhist
and OT sources for writing the intial chapters of his gospel.

The
purpose of the two initial chapters is quite obvious: Two of the greatest
men in history have been born: Jesus and John the Baptist , who
would prepare the way for Jesus.

Luke
changed the original names. The Buddhist prince and his servant obtained
a new identity: King Jesus and John the Baptist. The Buddhist seers also
changed their identity, and so did the original location: Asita and
Nālada in the palace of Kapilavastu became Simźon and Anna in the
temple in Jerusalem.

Luke
cannot be used as source of what actually took place, but these chapters
erve as an excallent specimen of what the phrase "judaized
Buddhism" actually means.

Christian
Lindtner
February 27, a. D. 2010

Capernaum
was Kapilavastu - Kingdom of Gods

Capernaum
(Kapernaoum, Kapharnaoum) and the synagoge in that town plays exactly the
same role in the legend of Jesus as Kapilavastu and the assembly hall in
that town plays in the legend of the Buddha, i.e. Sākyamuni, the
Tathāgata.

Capernaum
is never mentioned in the Old Testament, and scholars do not agree about
its exact location on the map. It is said to have been Jesus“ own city,
idia polis, Matthew 9:1, and it is also described as having
been located "upon the sea-side", tźn parathalassian,
Matthew 4:13.

The
derivation of Kaper- or Kaphar- -naoum is uncertain. It seems to mean the
town or place of Kaper, or Kaphar. But who was he?

In
the MSV, p.5 - as always our main source along with the Lotus
- we read that the Lord Buddha was staying in the
Nyāgrodārāme in Kapilavastu. The inhabitants of Kapilavastu - the Sākyas
- are staying in the assembly hall (samsthāgāre) of Kapilavastu.
From there they go to the Buddha in the Nyāgrodhārāme (locative case). He
teaches them about their past etc.

At
some point he goes to Kapilavastu, his home town (his father was king of
Kapilavastu). People lack faith, but he converts them by way of
miracles.

In
the MSV, p. 88, we read that Kapilavastu, the place, or town, vastu (=
naoum) of the sage Kapila (= Kaper or Kaphar) was located on the bank of
the Ganges river, on the slope of the Himalayas (anu-himavat-pārsve).

Thus
the location on the banks of the Ganges on the slope of the Himalayas
becomes that of Caernaum upon or along the sea-side.

(It
may be added that Sanskrit compounds indicating
locations with a preposition as first member are
always carefully translated into Greek.)

No
wonder scholars have problems locating Capernaum. They have - as so
often - been looking at the wrong map!

The
Buddha teaching in the assembly hall becomes Jesus teaching in the
synagoge. The Greek "in the synagoge", (en) sunagōgź, is
a perfect rendering of Sanskrit samsthāgāre, in the assembly hall.

When
it is said that Jesus moved from Nazara (Matthew 4:13) to Kapharnaoum, this
was the Buddha who came from Nyāgrodha to Kapilavastu.. Here, Nazara
(unusual spelling!) reflects the Sanskrit Nyagrodha.

From
Matthew 13:53-58 we learn that Jesus came to his own country
(more exactly: his paternal country, area) etc., and that he did not do
many mighty works there because of their unbelief (a-pistia).

This
reflects the celebrated episode in the MSV, p.188, where Buddha
(Sākyamuni) came back to Kapilavstu - his father“s town - where he
at first was met with disbelief (Sanskrit a-prasāda). But then he
converted them by some miracles (that are also in the NT - the miracles
of water and fire)..

Matthew
13:58 is normally translated as a statement such as : " And he did
not there work many miracles because of their unbelief."

Now that
the Buddhist source has been identified, we can be sure that the phrase
can also be translated as a rhetorical question: " And did ho not
work many miracles there because of their unbelief?"

He
surely did!

The
centurion in Capernaum mentioned in Matthew 8:5-13 is easily identified
as the father of Sākyamuni in Kapilavastu.

In
the same pericope, we are informed that some of us shall sit down with
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.

This
is clearly based on MSV, p. 196, where the Lord teaches in the asembly
hall of the gods - the kingdom of heaven. The gods are present: Brahmā,
Sakra and Kuberas and others.

So
the Indian god Brahmā becomes Abrahma, the Indian god Sakra becomes Isaac
(Isaak) , and the Indian god Kuberas becomes Jacob, Greek Iakōbos.

The
kingdom of god - Sanskrit devas = Greek theos - was to be found in
Kapilavastu.

The
Greek term kingdom is perfect - it weas the kingdom of Kapilavstu - the
father of the Buddha. His father is addressed "deva" - God!
Hence Kapilavastu is the kingdom of that God!

The
anonymous Buddhist missionaries behind these NT passages, we may safely
conclude, followed the "Jesuitic" rule prescribed for
propaganda in the Lotus: Work secretly, by way of theft (rahasi
caurenāpi).

One
cannot say that they were not successful!

Christian
Lindtner
February 15, a. D. 2010

TWO
DROPS OF WATER WITH BLOOD - Buddhist source of Mark 15:21 etc.

Here
are three NT passages that, at first sight, have nothing at all in
common:

According,
first, to Mark 15:21 only, the otherwise unknown Simon of Cyrene,
who was forced to carry the cross of Jesus, was the father of two sons,
Alexander and Rufus.

According,
second, to Luke 22:44, which is left out in several modern editions
of the NT (but attested by many early fathers of the Church) , Jesus, in
his great anguish, prayed even more fervently; his sweat was like drops
of blood, falling to the ground.

According,
third, to John 19:34, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, one
soldier plunged his spear into his side, and at once blood and
water poured out.

As
said, apparently these three accounts have nothing in common.

So
why combine them here?

If
one is familiar with the legend of the crucifixion of
Gatama in the MSV (p. 24-25), it is not difficult to recognize
that we are here dealing with three different versions of one and
the same Buddhist source.

A
simple observation with highly impoirtant consequences:

Gautama
is hanging on the pole. He has been impaled for murdering a prostitute,
Bhadrā, even though - as it turns out later - he was innocent. The
real murderer escaped in the crowd.

As
he is hanging there in great anguish, his teacher, upādhyāya,
a certain Krsna-dvaipāyanas, turns up.
They talk together for a while. Gautama is about to pass
away, but he has left no offspring. What can be done?

Then
it starts to rain. The water is mixed with the blood from the innocent
man (Gautama alias Jesus). Two drops of water mixed with blood
fall to the ground. Two eggs develop from the blood (which is in
accordance with traditional Indian embryology.). The egg-shells
break. The Sanskrit noun for egg-shells is kapalāni - which also means
skulls. (Hence Golgotha is called the place of the Skulls).

Gautama
passes away when the sun is more = most fervent
(bhāsuratarā) - hence the fervent in Luke 22:44. Krsna-dvaipāyana
becomes the father, i.e. the foster father of the two sons that developed
from the two eggs.

The
Sanskrit for the two drops of water (semen) and blood is: dvau
sukra-bindū sa-rudhire (p. 25, line 6), i.e.: two water-drops with-blood.

In
Mark the two drops of water with blood become Alexandrou kai Rouphou -
(the father) of Alexander and Rufus - two boys otherwise not known from
early Christian sources. San. sa-rudhire becomes kai Rouphou; the sa-
means kai, and; and rudhira means red, like Rufus. Alexandrou (genitive)
is from sukra-bindū, with the genitive in the Greek is as
close to the dual Sanskrit ending - ū as one can come.

It
thus does make sense when Mark says that Simon of Cyrene was the father
of Alexander and Rufus, for Krsnadvapāyana was indeed the foster father
of the two boys that developed from the two drops of water (semen) with
blood.

In
Luke 22:44 - which has always embarrassed interpreters - the sweat of
Jesus, like drops of blood falling to the ground, is an accurate
translation of the Sanskrit: sukra-bindū sa-rudhire. The San. verb is the
same as the Greek. Moreover, the adjective, in comparative form is the
rare ektenesteron, Luke 22:44. It is an exact rendering of the San.
comparative bhāsuratarā - even more intense, more fervent. It fits better
with the rays of the sun than with the mode of prayer. The MSV makes best
sense.

Finally,
in John 19:34, blood and water pour out from the side of the man on the
cross. This is due to the spear - an echo of the pole on which Gautama
was impaled in the original Buddhist source.

It
is thus, to conclude, clear that one and the same Sanskrit compound was
translated and employed in three different manners by three different
evangelists.

The
evangelists knew the same story and they were, all of them, very
much interested in the Sanskrit compound: dvau sukra-bindū sa-rudhire -
the two drops of semen (or water) that, mixed with blood, fell to
the ground.

The
Sanskrit original is not entirely free from obscene connotations. But
this is typical of classical Sanskrit literature.

In
Mark, Luke and John there are no obscene connotations. This does not
necessarily mean that they were motivated by prudishness.

In
their version of the Buddhist legend there was no room for the hero to
have children.

The
unknown authors were very competent in Greek as well as Sanskrit. The
three evangelists worked together, comparing their
"translations".

It
will be easy for the reader to identify the innocent man on the
"cross", the man who got away etc. The events took place
near Potalas - becoming Pilatos (Peilatos) etc. etc.

Without
a good knowledge of Sanskkrit - how can one understand NT Greek?

NB:
This essay could not be published in any theological journal - where
there is no room for original Sanskrit sources.

When
Jesus foretold his death and resurrection, Peter took him aside and
rebuked him, saying: "God forbid, Lord, this must never happen to
you!"

With
these words Peter showed that he cared for his Lord, and thus we are
surprised to learn how Jesus reacts: " Go behind me, Satan! You are
an obstacle (scandal) to me, for you do not think of the (things?) of
god, but of the (things?) of men."

Peter
must have been puzzled, if not shocked, and so are we.

Why
is Jesus so rude? Why is Jesus so obscure?

Why
does Peter have to go behind (Greek opisō) Jesus, and what does that have
to do with his not thinking of the (things) of god but of men?

The
answers are to be found in the Buddhist source, in this case MPS 35:2.

On
that occasion - we read - the venerable Upamāna (in Pāli called Upavāna)
was standing with a fan in front of the Lord. Then the Lord said to
him:" Monk! do not stand in front of me!"

One
of the other monks present, Ānanda, is surprised, for he has never in his
long life heard the Lord express himself so rudely to anyone.

Why
is the Lord so rude to the monk?

The
Lord explains: When a Buddha is about to pass away - as Jesus foretold
his death in Matthew and Mark - the gods (devatā) gather from afar
in order to witness the spectacular event. When Upamāna is standing
in front of him with his fan, he becomes an obstacle that prevents the
gods from seeing what is going on. Hence the Lord commands the monk not
to stand in front of him, but to go behind him. Then only the gods
can observe the event.

I
have already given many examples of the MPS as a major source of the NT
Gospels, and when it comes to the rude words of Jesus to his disciple,
the source is once again the MPS.

In
this case we have a Sanskrit version as well as a Pāli version, with minor
variants. Both are to be found in the edition of Waldschmidt ( Berlin
1951 , p. 356).

The
Greek (any modern edition) is: hypage opisō mou, satana, and it
translates a combination of the Pāli and the Sanskrit:

The
Buddhist monk, in the vocative, becomes Satan, also in the vocative.

The
Greek imperative hypage is a perfect rendering of Pāli apehi, also
imperative.

The
"not in front of me" in the original becomes "behind"
in the Greek,which is opisō. The choice of opisō mou is perfect,
for not only does it render the original meaning correctly, but it also
contains a pun on the name of the monk in question, viz. Upamānas
(nominative form): the consonants p-s-m. Only the n is not represented in
the Greek.

When
it comes to the gods, the Greek says ta... theou, those (what?) of (the)
god. It is obscure. But the original mentions devatā, meaning divine
being, divinity, or simply god.

The
form of the abstract noun deva-tā is from deva + tā. And so we
understand the curious Greek ta... theou, those of god. The Greek ta
reflects the Sanskrit -tā.

Peter
was said to be a skandalon, and the original meaning of that noun in
Greek is an stumbling-stone, an obstacle-stone (on the road).

The
choice of this word, again, demonstrates the skill of the translators. In
the orignal it was understood that the monk was an obstacle because he
prevented the gods from seeing the spectacle when he stood there in
front with his fan.

This
is quite clear.

On
the other hand, it is unclear in the gospels why he is an obstacle. To
understand the point of Peter being an obstacle we need the information
about the gods as spectators. But this information is left out by Matthew
and Mark.

Moreover,
there is, in skandalon, a hidden pun on the name of Peter - a pun
on petros, a stone, or petra, a rock.

Finally,
the original of the "those of the men" - ta tōn anthrōpōn - is
not to be found in MPS 35.

Conclusion:
To get the complete picture we need the Buddhist source.

Again
and again we come to this conclusion: Matthew and his colleagues
deliberately leave out parts of the original story, so that the gospel
version becomes obscure and puzzling. The purpose can only be to make the
reader wonder and invoke his curiosity.

The
use of puns, obscure and puzzling pohrases, parables etc. is
explicitly recommended in the Lotus Sūtra - another major source of the
NT- for the purpose of attracting people to be converted.

Unfortunately,
theologians, as a rule, mistake a deliberately obscure and absurd version
of the Buddhist original as an expression of the profundness of the
mind of Jesus.

The paradox
of Jesus being cruel as well as compassionate is solved once it is seen
that we are here dealing with two different versions of the same Sanskrit
phrase, found in MSV (ed. R. Gnoli, p. 130, line 5):

drstvā
ca punar asya
sattvesu
mahākarunā “vakrāntā:

"having
seen -and-again- for him-to human beings- great compassion
descended".

The
idea simply is: The Lord sees how ignorant human beings are, and
therefore feels compassion for them.The purpose of teaching is to remove
suffering.

Matthew
first took the six syllables of drstvā ca sattvesu, and rendered them in
six syllables: idōn de tous okhlous.

Then
he took the eight syllables mahākarunā “vakrāntā, and rendered them
in eight syllables: esplagkhnisthź peri autōn.

Mark
took the six syllables drstvā ca “vakrāntā, and rendered them in six
syllables: kai exelthōn eiden.

Then
he took the seven syllables: punar asya sattvesu, and rendered them in
seven syllables: Iźsous polun okhlon kai.

Finally,
he took the eight syllables: mahākarunā “vakrāntā, and , repeating
the kai, rendered them in eight syllables: kai esphlagkhnisthź ep“
autous.

As a
rule, Buddhist texts mention compassion in the context of teaching: The
Lord observes that human beings suffer due to ignorance. Hence, moved by
compassion, he starts to teach them the Dharma that removes ignorance and
thereby leads to liberation from suffering.

This
fits the gospel context perfectly: Jesus is here presented as a
teacher and he sends out his disciples to teach others - about
Righteousness, dikaiosunź, i.e. Dharma.

But
Jesus wants to remove suffering, not by knowledge, but by faith. That
idea is also Buddhist - it is lifted from Mahāyāna, mainly the
Saddharmapundarīkasūtram - the Lotus.

Jesus,
we may conclude, borrowed his great compassion from the Buddha, but
that did not prevent him from being cruel to innocent animals
and to human beings.

After
all, as the alleged son of Jahweh, he came of a very cruel stock. The
paradox, in short, comes from the combination of OT and Buddhist
sources.

Jesus
was led to the desert by the wind - did he fly? - where he was tempted by
the Devil - a strange character - who first asked him to turn stones to
bread - an odd exercise - and then took him to the holy city,
setting him on the top of the temple - out there in the desert? -
Finally, the Devil took Jesus to a very high mountain, showing him
all the kingdoms of the world - what a view from out there in the middle
of nowhere! Here, he made him an offer: " All this I will give you -
IF you will kneel down and worship me!" - But, no, Jesus rejects the
offer, the Devil leaves, and angels come and help Jesus.

One must, of course be very naive in order to take these
fables for true history, yet theologians still do so, asking for the
exact location of the desert, the high mountain, the pinnacle of the
temple etc. As usual, Matthew and his colleagues combine OT and Buddhist
sources into a new whole. The OT sources have already been identified
long ago, and I will not repeat them here.

The Buddhist sources are mostly found in the MSV, I, pp. 94-96:

Before the Bodhisattva goes to the hermitage - Sanskrit ā-sra-mam,
hermitage, (p. 96) becomes Greek e-rź-mon, desert - he entered the
(holy) city of Rāja-grham, where the king, Bimbisāra(s), is
standing up there on the top of the palace.
The Sanskrit compound upari-prāsāda-tala-gatas is rendered very
nicely by Greek epi to pterugion tou hierou (Matthew 4:5; Luke
4:9): The upari becomes epi; the top of the palace becomes the top of the
temple. The verb gatas, gone to, represents Greek histźsin, placed.

The
king approaches the Bodhisattva and offers him
beautiful women etc., in these words: dadāmi te varān bhogān, "I
will give you very good things", IF you will tell me your name and
background. The Bodhisattva tells the king about his family etc., but is
not at all interested in the kind offer.

The
Devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world - a manifest absurdity,
for who in the world has the power to do so? But the Indian king of
Rājagrham in Magadha (Magadha turns up in Matthew 15:39), Bimbisāra(s)
(v.l: Bimbasāra(s)), offers Bodhisattva a share in his kingdom - which
makes sense.

The
reasons given by Jesus for rejecting the kind - and absurd - offer remain
obscure.
In the case of the Bodhisattva, the reason for his rejecting the
perfectly rational offer, is clear: He, the Bodhisattva, is
interested in becoming an enlightened Buddha, not a worldly king. That
decision was made long ago, before he met the king. The Devil who
"tempted" Jesus, we conclude, was, in this case,
the king of Magadha - the four syllables of Bim-bi-sā-ras thus becoming
Di-a-bo-los.

The Greek offer of the Devil is (Matthew 4:9):
tauta soi panta dōsō - these to you all I will give.

The San. dadāmi becomes Gr. dōsō, I will give. The San. te becomes Gr.
soi, to you.
The San. accusative is varān bhogān, best enjoyments, good things, become
Gr. accusative: tauta panta, these all. The Gr. has seven syllables, the
San. eight, as required by San. prosody.

The notion that Jesus was carried by the wind - suggesting that he
was able to fly - is abhorrent to most theologians, who,
therefore, normally translatre the Greek by "Jesus was led by the
Spirit", or the like, thus obscuring the original hupo tou pneumatos
- by the wind. But in Buddhist scriptures, Buddhas can fly, no
problem - and so could our imaginary friend , Jesus.

Christian Lindtner
January 18, a. D. 2010

BE
IT FAR FROM THEE, LORD! - Buddhist source of Matthew 16:22

The
NT gospels, are, by and large, literary mosaics, fabricated by
lifting words and phrases from Buddhist gospels, combining them
with words and phrases from the OT. We are, therefore, not dealing with
history, but with fiction.

One
of the main Buddhist sources is the Lotus Sūtra - the Saddharmapundarīka
(SDP). According to Matthew 16:22, Peter took the Lord aside and said to
him: hileōs soi, kurie; ou mź estai touto: "Gracious for
you,Lord, may this not be!" This is taken from the Sanskrit of
the SDP (p. 53). The Lord asked Sāri-Putras a question, and
Sāri-Putra answered - Sāri-putra āha: na hy etad Bhagavan; na hy
etad Sugata: "Not surely this, Lord; not surely this, Good-gone!" The
Greek hileōs means gracious, which suggests that a "let God
be", or "God is", may be understood. The Vulgata,
however, says:

Absit
a te , Domine; non erit tibi hoc! "Be it far from thee, Lord; for
this shall not be unto thee." The Vulgata, for the first word,
thus comes closer to the original (na hy, not surely) of the SDP.

Observations: The Buddhist disciple, PuTRaS becomes PeTRoS.- Perfect!
The Sanskrit Bhagavan, Lord (vocative) becomes kurie, Lord
(vocative).- Perfect!
There are two negations in the Sanskrit (na, na); likewiese in the Greek
version (ou mź).-Perfect! The San. consists of 7 (6) plus 7 (6)
syllables. (hy etad may be read as 3 or 2 syllables.) The Greek consists
of 7 plus 6 syllables. - Perfect! Sanskrit etad becomes Greek touto,
"this". - Perfect! In the San. the verb is understood (as
normally). The verb understood is, for sure, asti/bhavati,
"is", becoming estai in the Greek. What is - apparently -
missing in the Greek is the Su-gata of the original.Sugata is, of
course, one of the many names of Bhagavān (nominative form).
Su-gata, here in the vocative, may be understood as: (You) are well
gone! But gata, in itself, has many meanings: "understood,
disposed" etc. Su-gata may thus be taken as "well-disposed"
- which is the interpretation behind the Greek: hileōs.

Conclusion:
Sugatam! This patchwork was, as always, done with great care and
attention to all details in the original Sanskrit. This
conclusion is in accordance withe established fact that all
syllables have been carefully by Matthew in the gospel (wrongly) ascribed
to him.

Christian Lindtner
January 14, a.D. 2010

AND
or OF? Buddhist source of Mark 2:16

When
it comes to Comparative Gospel Studies (CGS), there is a rule that says -
or ought to say - that the Devil is to be found in the
philological detail, and that that Devil may in fact turn out to be a
tiny god of revelation.
How so?

One
of the characteristic features of the Sanskrit language (and Pāli as
well) is the extensive employment of compounds. Thus, for
instance, two nouns may be combined thus: brāhmana-grhapati, or
sramana-brāhmana, or bodhisattva-srāvaka, etc. These compounds are
so-called dvandva-s, which means that an "and" is understood.
That the "and" should be understood, and added when we
translate, is clear not only from the Buddhist context but also
from subsequent translations into other "Buddhist languages"
such as Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, etc. In other words,
brāhmana-grhapati should be translated as "priests AND
householder(s)", sramana-brāhmana as "ascetics AND
priests", bodhisattva-srāvaka as "bodhisattvas AND
srāvakas" , etc.

We
can, as said, be sure that the AND should be added from the context, but
at the same time it is clear that in theory one could also translate,
without violating the Sanskrit syntax, as "the householders OF the
priests", "the priests OF the sramanas", or "the
srāvakas OF the bodhisattvas". All this is known to Sanskrit
scholars.

When the authors of the NT gospels translated from the Sanskrit, they
also imitated these Buddhist compounds. For that reason, we are
constantly confronted with " the Pharisees and Sadducees"
(Matthew 16:1), with "the chief priests and the
Pharisees" (Matthew 27:62) etc. All such NT dvandva-s have a
Buddhist source. (For a fairly complete list, with the
Sanskrit equivalents, my Geheimnisse, pp. 161-166, or
Hemligheten om Kristus, pp. 156-160).

Now, in all these cases there can be no doubt that the "and"
represents the original Sanskrit quite correctly.

One curious and utterly revealing exception to the rule
is provided by Mark 2:16, who speaks of "the grammarians OF the
Phariseees". This odd expression has led some translators to violate
the Greek text Thus , for instance, the "Today“s English
Version" of the American Bible Society translates: "Some
teachers of the Law, who were Pharisees..." The reader is thus left
with the wrong impression that the text speaks of one group of people,
not of two different groups. If one is familiar with the Buddhist
original it is easy to see what happened. The original Sanskrit compound
was a dvandva, i.e. an AND - not an OF - had to be understood. We
can see that Mark, without violating the Sanskrit syntax , translated the
Sanskrit compound wrongly, i.e. deliberately wrongly. The Sanskrit, in
other words, had a compound A-B. That compound could either be understood
as A and B, or as B of A. Each of the two renderings would be in accordance
with Sanskrit syntax, but only one of them would be in accordance with
the sense originally intended.

To
conclude: As a rule, all the NT compounds of the type "A and
B", with reference to various groups of persons,
are correct renderings of the Sanskrit "A and B compounds".
Mark 2:16 is an exception to that rule. But this exception points back to
the same Buddhist source. Mark cannot - as shown by the many
"correct" renderings in that Gospel - have been unaware that
the OF was a "wrong" rendering. But it was, as said,
correct from the point of view of Sanskrit syntax. Deliberately
"wrong" versions of the original Sanskrit are not uncommon in
the Greek of the NT.

Another
example of the same sort - with focus on the firts part of the compound
in the genitive case - is provided by two different renderings of
one and the same Sanskrit original. Sometimes the Greek speaks of the
Kingdom of God, some times it speaks of the Kingdom of the Heavens. Here
we are no longer dealing with dvandva-s, but with another sort of
compound combining two different nouns. The first part of the compound
defines the second part more closely.

The
Sanskrit original is, as a rule, deva-parisad - the "kingdom"
of deva-. The first part of the compound tells us what kind of parisad
("congregation", "assembly") we are dealing
with. Sanskrit deva (nominative devas) corresponds to Greek theos,
to Latin deus.
Here, deva- is the firsat part the Sanskrit compound. The Sanskrit says
"the deva-kingdom". One cannot see whether the deva- should be
understood as being in the singular or in the plural.From the point of
view of Sanskrit syntax, both options are allowed. If we therefore take
deva- in the genitive singular (devasya = theou), we get "of
god". If we, alternatively, take it in the plural (devānām =
ouranōn), we get "of the gods, of the heavens".

Thus
the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the Heavens are but two different -
but equally correct - versions of one and the same Sanskrit
original. NT scholars have, as known, been puzzled by the two
synonymous phrases. But this is only because they have failed to study
Sanskrit. And a theologian of the NT with no knowledge of
Sanskrit - how can the Kingdom of the heavens be said to belong to him?

Absolutely
fundamental to any sort of Christianity is the belief in the resurrection
of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. If the dead are not raised
and if Christ has not been raised, then the Christian faith is a
delusion and Christians are lost in their sins. Such is the view of Paul.
Such is the faith of Christians. But as historians we must ask: What is
the evidence or proof of the resurrection of Christ and of the dead?

The
common opinion of Christian theologians and believers is that "the
oldest and most reliable" evidence or proof of the resurrection of
Christ is provided by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. There may be a few
other witnesses, mainly women, but they cannot be considered very
reliable. But how can we be sure that Paul is reliable, and that 1 Cor.
15:1-11 provides the oldest and best evidence?

The
mere fact that a given witness makes a claim does not make him reliable.
One must ask for his sources. He may be wrong, he may be a liar.
Now Paul does in fact refer to certain sources, for he says that he
has his information from certain scriptures. Unfortunately, these
scriptures cannot be identified. All theologians agree that there are no
scriptures in Greek or Hebrew that can be identified as the sources of
Paul“s claims concerning resurrection. At this point, therefore, we
cannot decide the value or validity of the testimony provided by
Paul. Is he, as a witness, reliable or is he not reliable? If we
want to be honest, we cannot decide. The case must be left sub judice.

Now,
fortunately, help is on its way - not to Paul, but to historians. In this
case, as in so many other cases. the source of Paul can be traced back to
the MPS, which is available in Sanskrit and in Pāli. Anyone familiar with
the MPS can easily see that Paul has combined two chapter from that text,
namely chapters 9 and 48 (in the edition of Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951, pp.
162-171 & 420-425).

Here
are the main points:

MPS
9: In the village of Nādikā a large number of brothers and sisters have
passed away. What will become of them? It is explicitly said that
"more than 500 brothers have passed away". This sentence
is available in the Sanskrit (9:15) and in the Pāli
(Waldschmidt, p. 166). The Pāli has been translated into English, e.g. by
Trevor Ling: "More than five hundred devout men of Nadika who
have died" (The Buddha“s Philosophy of Man, London 1981, p.
159) This accounts for the " more than five hundred brothers...of
whom some have died", in 1 Cor. 15:6, a statement that has always
caused the greatest embarrassment to theologians. The more than 500
brothers are never mentioned in any other ancient Christian sources -
with one exception, a Coptic source that says that the more than 500 were
Indian priests (see R. Garbe, Indien und das Christentum, Süderbrarup 2004,
p. 292). There is, as we have just seen, some truth in this. There was an
Indian source for the 500.

The
Buddhist ext then explains that some of those who have passed away will
never return again, whereas others will return "once", Sanskrit
sakrd. This accounts for the Greek ephapax, "at once" in 1 Cor
15:6. Greek ephapax simply translates the Sanskrit synonym sakrd - once,
at once. Immediately before he mentions the "more than five
hundred brothers, Paul mentions Kźphas and "all twelve" (some
translators add "apostles", but the Greek does not mention
apostles at all). The twelve were not "apostles" at all - they
were Buddhists: Again, Paul follows the MPS, which, as said,
has been transmitted to us in several versions. One of these, now
only in Chinese, explicitly speaks of exactly 12 brothers who have been
reborn among the gods (this is the Dīrghāgama, translated by Waldschmidt,
Ūberlieferung...Göttingen 1944, p. 71).
Other versions give different numbers here (one Chinese version gives the
number 10), and it is quite remarkable that the Latin Vulgata speaks of
eleven, not twelve, 1 Cor. 15:6.

Paul
also mentions Kźphas and Iakōbos, and here one must pay attention to the
spelling: There are three consonants in both cases: k-b(ph)-s. Both names
translate the Sanskri name of Kāsyapa(s) - k-p-s. Chapter 48 of the same
MPS provides us with the second source of Paul. Here we meet
Kāsyapas who, along with five hundred monks, finally arrive and
become witnesses to the cremation of the physical body of the Lord. His
"jewel body" goes up to the world of Brahmm, i.e. in flames.
The Sanskrit verb for "went up", agaman, MPS 49:23, corresponds
to the Greek for "raised".

To
summarize: Paul refers to scriptures that are not available in Greek or
Hebrew. But they are available in Sanskrit and Pāli. These scriptures
are, therefore, Buddhist scriptures.

It
is quite true, as Paul says, that more than five hundred brothers,
along with Kāsyapas, were witnesses to the "resurrection", i.e.
cremation of the Lord. The Lord was a ksatriyas, a nobleman, and Sanskrit
ksatriyas becomes Greek ho Khristos, in the usual way. Hence, Paul is
careful not to speak of Jesus, but of Khristos. When Paul combines
two different chapters, and two different episodes in the Buddhist original,
he does so not entirely at random but according to certain rules.
According to rabbinical hermeneutics, it is allowed to combine two
otherwise different scriptural passages provided they have a significant
number in common. This rule, in Hebrew, is called Neged,
"corresponding significant number". An example is provided by
OT, when Numbers 13:25 mentions 40 days, and Numbers 14:34 mentions 40
years. The two otherwise unrelated passages have a correspondig
significant number, viz. 40. In exactly the same way , Paul
combines two passages in the same Buddhist text, the MPS, where one
chapter mentions more than 500 brothers, and another mentions 500 monks.

All
this means, of course, that the "proof" or "evidence"
provided in support of the faith in the historical resurrection of
Christ, and the dead in general, is purely fictitious. Paul refers to
scriptures, i.e. Buddhist scriptures, that describe some events that took
place - or did not take place - far away in Magadha a long time
ago. (Magadha, it will be recalled, was mentioned by Matthew 15:39 only.)
He, Paul, then combined events from that Buddhist text into a new
unit. He then transferred this piece of literary fiction to another
place, to another time, to another person. How can, for example,
events said to have taken place in India centuries ago, prove the
historicity of events said to have taken place in, say, New York
quite recently! Paul cannot have been unaware of what he was doing. Paul
cannot have been unaware that he was a falsifier of history. Paul cannot
have been unaware that he was himself a false witness.Once we recognize
this to be so, we also understand why Paul compares himself to a
"miscarriage", an ektrōma, as it were, in 1 Cor. 15:8. Paul
justifies himself by stating that he is what he is - that is: a false
witness - thanks to the grace of God.

What
is that supposed to mean? What does "grace of God" mean in this
context?
It can only mean that deliberate deceit is a good thing provided it can bring
about some desirable result. There is no evidence at all to suggest that
Jesus existed or had been raised from the dead, but if people could feel
happy when fooled into believing so - fine and good. The same
fundamental attitude is reflected well in Romans 3:7, which in plain
words simply says that untruth is fully acceptable provided it serves the
greater glory of God. Such a Jesuitic attitude is also
typical Buddhist. In the Lotus Sūtra, Buddhist muissionaries are advised
to employ tricks, lies etc. for the greater glory of the Buddhas.

If
people like to be deceived -let them be deceived! And in our modern world
we speak of propaganda, or, to use an euphemism, mass communication.
Thus, Paul, when it come to the evidence for resurrection of Christ and
of the dead, proves to be a prominent false witness. That he himself,
however, may have believed in the resurrection of the dead, need not be
doubted.

This
belief is typical Buddhist. Due to their bad karma, people may go down to
the dead in the hells. After some time, they may come back to this world.
The "dead" in the hells are not really dead. They can come back
to normal life and suffering.
They have thus been raised from the world of the dead.

The
Buddhist background of Paul is thus clear. When he presents himself as a
Christian, however, and fails to acknowledge his Buddhist sources
explicitly, he then can be descibed as, well, an ektrōma (to use his own
term).

Christian Lindtner
Dec. 29th, a.D. 2009

JESUS
- THE FAMOUS SANSKRIT SCHOLAR

If
one claims that Jesus was a historical person able to talk and to
write, and that he also was the author of the celebrated
parable of the ten virgins - known to us only from Matthew 25:1-13 - then
one is also compelled to admit that Jesus was indeed a Sanskrit scholar -
the most famous of all Sanskrit scholars , surely. How so?

As I
have shown in my book and in several essays, the MSV, which includes the
MPS, is one of the main sources of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There is
hardly a chapter in the MPS that has not left traces in the NT gospels.

The
direct source of Matthew 25:1-13 is to be found in MPS, Chapter 4. This
chapter is available not only in Sanskrit, but also in Pāli, as well as
in several old Chinese versions from now lost Sanskrit originals.
(There are also Tibetan and Mongolian versions, to be sure.) When one
compares these various versions, there are interesting variants, but the
basic story is the same:

Tathāgata
(Buddha) delivers a sermon on pramādas and apramādas. Sanskrit
PRaMāDaS means negligence, carelessness. Sanskrit aPRaMāDaS means the
opposite, i.e. carefulness, heedful attention, vigilance. There are five
disadvantages associated with PRaMāDaS, e.g. after passing away an immoral
person goes to Hell. Likewise, there are five advantages associated
with aPRaMāDaS, e.g. after passing away, a good person goes to
Heaven (svarga). Stupid people engage in PRaMāDaS, whereas wise people
are very concerned about aPRaMāDaS. The sermon is delivered to
brahmans and householders from the town of Pātali.

The purpose of the parable of the ten virgins, Matthew 25:1-13, is
clearly to make the point that one must be ready and prepared for the
coming of the Lord, in other words, for heaven (mentioned in the first
verse). Vigilance is in the focus. This was also the purpose of the
Buddhist sermon on vigilance. The Sanskrit word for the world of
heaven is svarga-loka (verse MPS 4:17). There are five wise virgins, and
there are five foolish virgins. All ten virgins have lamps, but five of
the ten forget about the oil. They are like a man, we may say,
wanting to go for a ride in his car, but forgetting all about
oil and gas.

Comparing the Buddhist and the Christian textual units, we cannot fail to
see that they are related. But how, quite precisely? How did the
"translations" take place?
In the usual fashion: In the Greek version the focus is on the ten
virgins and on the ten lamps. The Greek for virgin is PaRTheNoS, and the
Greek for lamps, in the accusative plural is LaMPaDaS. The Sanskrit
original had five kinds of aPRaMāDaS, and five kinds of PRaMāDaS, as
mentioned above. It is thus clear that the Greek P-R-T(h)-N-S and
L-M-P-D-S are but two fifferent versions of the five Sanskrit consonants
found in aPRaMāDaS as well as PRaMāDaS, i.e. P-R-M-D-S.

I
need not remind the reader that in the ancient Jewish scripts the vowels
were left out, and that in Sanskrit r and l often interchange (e.g. lājā,
king, for rājā etc.). The consonants d and t are both dentals, and m and
n are nasals. What an odd way of translating! - the moderrn reader may
exclaim. But if the modern reader finds it hard to believe that anyone
would translate in this way, this just betrays his ignorance of ancient
rabbinical hermeneutics. For it goes without saying that those who
translated these Buddhist texts were also familiar with the Old Testament
and thus also with rabbinical hermeneutics (without a knowledge of which
OT and NT are completely unintelligible).

If
two words have the same set of consonants they also have the same
numerical value, for each consonant has a numerical value of its own. For
example 3+4+5 is the same as 5+4+3. Thus a "bag" and a
"bug" are in a sense the same - for the number based on the
consonants are the same. (One can easily imagine the fun : bar and
beer, bear and rib etc. etc.)

To
repeat: The five kinds of disadvantage associated with carelessness
becomes five stupid virgins with five lamps without oil. The five kinds
of advantage associated with vigilance become the five wise virgins with
five lamps with oil. It is a common Buddhist dogma that
carefulness, vigiliance , is conducive to rebirth in hreaven.
(This is not typical Christian, where the emphasis is on grace.) The
Buddhist source explicitly says that carelessness is the cause of an
immoral person going to hell efter his passing away. This reference to
hell is left out in Matthew. When one compares many other words in
Matthew 25:1-13 with the Sanskrit (and Pāli), one will be able to identify
many other Greek words in the Sanskrit - the cry, the wise, the foolish
etc.

The
conclusion is that the Buddhist text gives the "full picture".
Much is left out in the Christian copy - with the result that reader is
puzzled. To leave the reader puzzled - and the commentators busy -
is a deliberate trick on the part of Matthew , Mark, Luke and John.
People are and have always been attracted by mysterious sayings,
puzzles and riddles. This is also a common Buddhist trick - to atract
people by entertaining and fooling them. It is, at the same time, a
typical rabbinical trick (see e.g. Hermann L. Strack, Introduction to the
Talmud and Midrash, New York 1959, pp. 93-98).

But there is more

The
Dutch theologian Smit Sibinga - who weas completely unaware of the
Sanskrit source (as he kindly informed me in a personal communication) -
has made a numerical analysis of Matthew 25:1-13, and pointed out that
"Matthew" carefully counted the number of syllables and
arranged the verses in a such a way that there is a clear center with
"circles" of the same number of syllables around that center.
This fine observation proves, in itself, that "Matthew" counted
syllables. That he counted syllables also means that he paid attention to
each syllable - i.e. to the spelling of each word. The man who is
responsible for Matthew 25:1-13 knew Sanskrit as well as Greek.

The general view of scholars is, by now, that the Greek text of Matthew
was not translated from some "Aramaic original" - giving the
words of Jesus in "his own tongue".

The
Greek text of Matthew - at least for this parable - must have been
translated directly from some Sanskrit original coming very close to the
MPS (ed. Ernst Waldschmidt, Berlin 1951). The consonants would have been
lost had the transtion not been direct. (There is also an old Pāli
version of MPS. It has often been translated into modern languages. An
English version by Trevor Ling is available in Everyman“s Library as
"The Buddha“s Philosophy of Man", London 1981. The Pāli text of
the 2 x 5 etc. is found in the Mahāvagga of the Vinayapitaka. For
all the references, see Ernst Waldschmidt, Die Überlieferung vom
Lebensende des Buddha, Göttingen 1944, p.52.).

To
conclude: If it is claimed that Jesus is the author of the parable
of the ten virgins, it also follows that this Jesus knew Sanskrit - and
Greek, of course - and that he counted syllables and words, i.e.
that he was a mathematician of some sort.

To
avoid this dangerous conclusion, one may argue that "Matthew"
has not represented Jesus correctly. This may, again, either mean that
Jesus never expressed this parable at all - which makes Matthew totally
unreliable. Or it may mean that Jesus was indeed, responsible for this
parable - but in another form. But even so, not only is this pure speculation,
but it is impossible to conceive of the ten virgins, the ten lamps, the
imprtance of vigilance for rebirth in heaven etc. isolated from the
Buddhist context, which is coherent and logical. So: either Jesus is
responsible for a good and "faithful" version of the
Sanskrit - as in Matthew 25:1-13. Or else he is responssible for a bad
and totally confused version.

In
any case, Jesus must have a been a Sanskrit scholar, and since Jesus
still is such a famous man , we can say: Jesus was a famous Sanskrit scholar.
About the relative chronology there can, to be sure, be no doubt. The
Pāli version of the parable is found in the Vinaya, which belongs to the
earliest strata of Buddhist literature. Moreover, the dogma of vigilance
leading to heaven only makes sense in the context of a theory of karma,
retribution - which is not exactly typical for Christianity! Who would
claim that the Buddhist doctrine of karma and rebirth is derived from
Jesus called Khristos?

The
only way to avaoid this conclusion is to accept that Jesus is not a
historical person at all. And that is a conclusion we often come
to. And it is a safe one, too. But the Sanskrit scholar behind the
parable remains.

Christian Lindtner
Dec. 21th, a.D. 2009

CUNDAS
- THE BUDDHIST JUDAS - AND AN OLD SONG

The
main Buddhist sources for the legend of the Passover and the
Traitor, are , as usual, to be found in the MSV. Thus, in MPS 26
(last part of MSV) we read about how the Lord and the monks had
their last (Sanskrit pascimam) meal in the home of a certain
Cundas, the son of a smith, San skrit karmāras. The Christian version, a
copy, is mainly found in Matthew 26:17-25; Mark 14:12-21; Luke
22:7-13, and John 26:20-25.

We
are on the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread - a curious
expression, rendering in, fact, San. pūrvāhne, or pubbanhasamayam (Pāli),
MPS 26:14, i.e. early in the morning. The Greek asumōn reflects the San.
samayam. The San. word for "last" is pas-ci-mam, which becomes
Greek to pas-kha, the passover.In both sources there is the last meal
taken with all the monks/disciples, but only in NT is the last meal
combined with the last words. I shall come back to this.

In
Matthew, the disciples are instructed to prepare the last meal in the
house of " a certain man", Greek: ton deina - not very
helpful! The Greek ton deina, as will be obvious in a moment, is a pun on
Cun-dam - tha accusative form of Cundas. Mark and Luke are a bit
more helpful, for they describe the unknown host as bearing a pitcher of
water. Poor disciples, for what if there were several unknown men in that
town bearing pitchers of water? The person in question is the
Buddhist Cundas, said to be the son, putras, of a smith, karmāras, MPS
26:14. The Buddha and the monks had their last meal together at Cundas“
place.

The
son of a karmāras becomes man carrying a pitcher, keramion, of water.
San. karmāras (accusative: karmāram) becomes Greek keramion. As
they are sitting there together, one evil monk steals a golden bowl (
other versions say it was of copper) and hides it in his sleeve. Only
Cundas and the Lord notice this case of theft, whereby the evil monk
obviously betrays the Buddhist "path".

In
the Christian version, the man who puts his hand in the bowl is defined
as the traitor, and his name is Joudas. John adds that he, Joudas, is the
son of Simōn Iskariotźs. The sense of that name is obscure, but
here probably intended as a translation of the San. karmāra-putras. In
Matthew 26:26 and the parallels, Jesus says: "Take (this, and) eat
(it), for this is my body" The Sanskrit original is to be
found a little later in the same Buddhist source, viz. MPS 42:10.
Here, Tathāgata is surrounded by the monks, and he says to them:
"Behold , monks, my body." " See, monks, my
body!" These are explicitly described as his last words to the
monks, MPS 42:11.

The
point of his words, I assume from the context, is to make the
monks aware of his physical decreptitude that will soon end in his
passing away. Not only does the Greek retain the two imperative forms of
the verb, addressed to the same group of disciples/monks, but the tou-to
gar es-ti - "for this is" - also renders the five
syllables ta-thā-ga-tas-ya quite nicely. The disciples of Jesus
are, in other words, invited to take and eat the body of Tathāgata
- i.e. to become Buddhists. This becomes more esy to understand, when one
recalls that the Tathāgata is an embodiment of the Buddhist Dharma. The
bread, Greek artos, that Jesus took, reflects the Sanskrit dharmas.

Since
the bread is the dharma, it follows that the bread-body is originally the
dharma-kāya, familiary to all Buddhists. And this is what numerous
Christians have been doing and still are doing - on many a Sunday.
The purpose and sense of taking part in the Eucharist then, is to have a
share in the body of the Tathāgata, the dharma-body. What elseis the
Lord“s Supper?

After these incidents, Matthew 26:30 reports that they sang a hymn and
went out to the Mount of Olives. What hymn, exactly, did they sing?
Matthew does not say. (Personal views of modern theologians are
irrelevant.) The hymn they sang, or rather the hymn that the Lord sang,
can be identified as Sutta-Nipāta, verses 83-90. These verses
describe four kinds of monks, ending with the one who betrays the Path of
Buddhism,i.e. by being a thief.

These
verses are not just incorporated in the MPS, but , as said, are
also available in the old text Sutta-Nipāta, in Pāli and other versions.
I am not aware of any Buddhist scholar prepared to question that
Sutta-Nipāta belongs to the earliest strata of Buddhist literature. They
are, in other words, pre-Christian.These verses are, therefore, the hymn
to which Matthew alludes, 26:30.

Now
someone may argue: Yes, it cannot be denied that Matthew and the other
evangelists have words, phrases, motives etc. in common with
MSV/MPS. But could it not be that the Buddhists copied from the NT?
Answer: In that case the Buddhists would also have copied verses found in
the old pre-Christian Sutta-Nipāta from some Christian source. But there
is no such Christian source.

But
could the Sutta-Nipāta not have belonged to some old, now lost Christian
source, from which the Buddhists then copied? Answer: Perhaps,
hypothetically, but in that case that early Christian source would have
had to be in some Indian language (Pāli? Sanskrit?), and the contents
would have been Buddhist, for it speaks of four kinds of Buddhist monks.
That early Christian hymn would, in other words, have to be
Buddhist!

Conclusion:
Tathāgata had his last meal with the monks at Cundas“ place. His last
words, later, in another place, to the monks were: Behold my body!
See my body!
The Christians made a new legend out of this. Cundas becames J(o)udas,
and J(o)udas became the name of the traitor, who was in fact the evil
monk who stole a precious bowl. The thief was not identical with Cundas,
but present at his house and observed by Cundas.

The
Lord“s Supper first took place in the house of Cundas, which is said to
have been in a village (grāmaka) called Pāpā, or - if we prefer the
Pāli form - Pāvā, MPS 26:2.The second part, with the body of Tathāgata in
the focus, took place later, in Kusinagarī, MPS 42:11.

The
evangelists combined the last meal and the last words into a new unit.
All this, therefore is fiction, not history.

Christian
Lindtner
December 14th., a. D. 2009

Mary,
Martha and Āmra - Buddhist sources of Luke 10:38-42

All
the many women called Maria (or Mariam) in the NT can be traced
back to either Māyā, the mother of Sākyamuni, or to Āmra-pālī, the
famous courtesan, ganikā. The main Buddhist source is, as usual, MSV,
including MPS.

Any
reader familiar with the MPS will be able to trace the Lord“s visit to
Martha and Mary - reported by Luke 10:38-42 only - back to MPS 10
-12. In 10, Āmrapālī, the famous courtesan of the village Vaisālī, comes
to pay her respect to Tathāgata who is surrounded by the
usual group of monks. She, too, is surrounded by a group of -
attractive prostitutes. The monks are unable to control their
minds, and therefore ask the Lord to teach them how to "pray",
so that they can avoid falling into temptation.

This
accounts for the fact that Jesus, in Luke 11:4, teaches his
"monks" how to pray so as to avoid falling into
temptation. Even today, pious Christians thus pray, unknowingly,
that they be not tempted by the beautiful Indian courtesan and her
prostitutes.-

Let us now take a closer look at Luke 10:38-42! As always, there is gematria,
or textual geometry, involved: Verse 38 consists of 23 words, or 46
syllables, the ratio being thus nicely 1:2. Verse 39 consists of 18
words.Verses 40-42 add up to 57 words. The unit as a whole thus consists
of 98 words, or 100 words, if tź-de in v. 38, and hź-tis in
v. 42 be counted as two words. It will be seen that Martha utters 18
words, corresponding to the number of words in v. 39. Jesus utters 23
words, corresponding to the number of words in v. 38. Finally, the
narrator is responsible for 57 words, corresponding to the number of
words in verses 40-42. Verse 38 consists , as said, of 46 syllables.
These 46 syllables, forming a unit, correspond to exactly 46
syllables, likewise forming a unit in the original Sanskrit, which
is MPS 10:3 = 11:1 = 15:4 ( ed. Waldschmidt, Berlin 1953, p. 172; my
Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus, p. 111).

By
comparing the Greek with the Sanskrit , we can make these interesting
observations:

1.
Luke speaks of "a certain village". The name of that village, we
now know, is Vaisālī. - Vaisālī is, of course, not mentioned in the NT or
elsewhere in early Christian documents. Nevertheless, Vaisālī is known to
Christians as a holy place in France,namely Vézelay, still
associated with the legend of Mary Magdalene, see http://www.vezelay.cef.fr

2.
The woman called Mariam sits down at the feet of Jesus, and listens to
his word, logos. This is exactly what Āmrapālī (or - pālir) does. She
sits down at the feet of Bhagavān, and listens as he talks, as usual,
about Dharma.

3.
When Jesus says that Maria chose "the good part", Greek:
tźn agathźn (merida), the authors made a typical pun on Tathāgatam
(accusative form). She was the first to choose to invite Tathāgata
for a meal and listen to him. When Luke then says that it cannot be taken
from her, this refers to the incident in MPS 11:23-24, where the
Licchavis of Vaisālī invite Bhagavān to enjoy a meal with them. He
declines their offer, for he has already accepted the invitation of
Āmrapālī, and that cannot be taken from her. At the same time it refers
to certain dharmas that "cannot be taken away".

4.
But who is this Martha? In verse 38, Luke describes her as "a
certain woman", gunź de tis, which is a free translation of Sanskrit
gani-kā, courtesan. The San. - kā has been treated (as common in
Rabbinical hermeneutics) as if it were an independent pronoun,
which is not so in the original Sanskrit. Still, the
"translation" is not bad: a certain prostitute becomes a
certain woman.

MPS 12:1 is introduced by: atha Āmra-pālīs..." Then Āmra....".
The two words are contracted to athāmra...This gives us the consonants
th-m-r, and from those three consonants the name of a newForside - CBS e-Campus woman is
born, the sister of Āmra, aka Maria - namely MaRTha.

In verse 39, Martha is said to have a sister CALLED Mariam. That is true
- it is only something she is called. To conclude: Maria (or Mariam) and
Martha are both derived from Āmra, the famous Indian ganikā. Before
she finally sits down at his feet and listens to his sermon on Dharma,
Āmra is busy preparing and serving food. This is still Martha at work.
MPS, in other words, presents Āmra in two different roles. This, in the
NT, becomes two different women, but still in the same roles, in the same
place, under the same circumstances etc. The food being served by
her to the Lord is described as sucinā pranītena, fine (and)
exquisite, MPS 12:4 (and often elsewhere). This stock phrase - seven
syllables in the instumental case - is also know to the Buddhists who
wrote the Gospels:

If
we turn to the Anointing at Bethany, Matthew 26:7, a woman brings an
alabaster jar filled with "expensive perfume", Greek:
murou barutimou. In Mark 14:3, it is descibed as pistikźs polutelous,
"genuine" (and) "expensive". In John 12:3 it is
said to be pistikźs polutimou, where polutimou = polutelous. We are thus
quite obviously dealing with three different translations of one and the
same Sanskrit phrase - an asyndeton - sucinā pranītena. The
"and" (San. ca, Greek kai) is left out. This proves the common
Buddhist source.

According
to John 12: 1, the episode took place at Bethany where Lazaros
lived, and it is Maria who takes the perfume described above. So the
Buddhist food has become Christian perfume. Lazaros is said to be the
brother of Maria and Martha, just as Maria was said to be the sister of
Martha.

All
this took place, as said, in Vaisālī, the home of the Licchavis.
There can, therefore, hardly be any doubt that Lazaros has derived his
identity from Laicchavis.

There
are several other observations to be made - puns on Āmra etc.- but
I think these examples show very well, how Luke, Matthew, Mark and John
used their Buddhists sources. They fabricated new persons and events
by recycling words and phrases from the Buddhist sūtras in
Sanskrit. They also counted words and syllables, as did the Buddhists
before them.

Theologians often claim that the genre of the NT gospels is
"unique".
This is true - but only if the Buddhist sūtra genre is left out of
consideration.
Luke 10:38 provides a small and excellent example of how NT
may imitate the sūtra genre.

It
is not just Jesus who proves to be a Buddha in disguise - the same goes
for all those women called Mary. They are Māyā and Āmra in disguise. The
idea that the Buddha disguises himself in different ways is an old one
with the Buddhists - see MPS 23:4.

There
is a common Buddhist saying that all things are just names.
That must also be kept in mind when we deal with names of persons and
places in the NT.

Christian
Lindtner
December 7th, a.D. 2009

THE
CROOKS ON THE CROSSES - Buddhist sources of Luke 23:39-43

As
the three men are hanging there, crucified, they find time for a brief
chat. A chat about the future - what will it bring? One of the
criminals asks Jesus to remember him when Jesus comes in his
kingdom, and Jesus - who can hardly be expected to know the man at all
- replies: "I tell you this: today you will be in Paradise
with me" - in the Greek: amźn legō soi, sźmeron met“ emou esź en tō
paradeisō - Lat.: Amen dico tibi, hodie mecum eris in paradiso. It
is only Luke 23:39-43, who reports the curious incident, and we
have no idea what his source may have been.Who told him?
Or perhaps we do. We shall see.

There
is some disagreement as to the proper translation of the ten
Greek words. Some would place the comma after sźmeron, giving us
thus the translation:"Today I tell you this: you will be in
Paradise with me." According to this understanding - that
of a Witness of Jehovah - the criminal will be with
Jesus at some future date, not already today. There is a Buddhist
source for this episode, and since it has been overlooked by scholars, it
will not be superfluous to call attention to that source - not just
because it enables us to decide where the comma in the Greek has to be
placed. The source for the promise of Jesus to one of the malefactors is
- as so often - the Mahāparinirvānasūtram (MPS), a part of the MSV. The
Lord, Bhagavān, is spending his last hours between two sāla-trees
(yamaka-sāla, MPS 32:6,7,9), surrounded by two disciples, first
Ānanda and, a little later, Subhadra, an old ascetic (MPS 40:
1-62). Subhadra is the last person to be converted and ordained. Once he
has been ordained, he expresses the wish that he may pass away before the
Lord, for he cannot bear the thought of surviving the Lord. The Lord
grants him this wish.

But
there is a problem!

Normally,
in Buddhism, good deeds lead to rebirth in heaven, whereas evil actions lead
to rebirth in the hells. Normally, it takes quite some time to accumulate
good or bad karma.
But here we are introduced to some exceptions to that golden rule
of karma. Without being aware of these exceptions to the rule, we cannot
understand the background of the words of Jesus quoted by Luke 23:43:
"Today you will be in Paradise with me". There are two cases,
we readin MPS 40, in which a pious Buddhist goes directly to
paradise (svarga). If he dies during pilgrimage to one of the four holy
places (pradesas): where the Lord was born, where He was
enlightened, where He delivered his first sermon, or where He
finally passed into Nirvāna. Moreover, a pious Buddhist will go
directly to heaven (svarga), if he dies in the very presence of the
Buddha.

It
is for this reason that Subhadra goes directly - on the same day -
to paradise or heaven. He is a pious Buddhist who dies in the presence of
the Buddha who is about to "die", or pass away into
Nirvāna here between the two trees and the two monks.
It is for exactly the same reason that the pious malefactor (kakourgos,
Luke 23:39) on the cross, according to the promise of Jesus, can expect
to go with Jesus to paradise on the same day.(That Jesus does not keep
the promise is another story - see below!)
When one compares the Sanskrit words with the corresponding Greek words,
one cannot fail to observe how closely Luke follows the original Buddhist
source: The San. has āman-trayate, he says (the subject of the verb being
the Lord, Bhagavān), which becomse amźn legō soi, amen I say to
you.(Only Jesus uses this phrase!) The San. PRaDeSaS, (holy) spot,
becomes PaRaDeiSoS (nominative form), a synonym of the San. svargas
(nom.), heaven.

In
the San. of the MPS there are two trees and two persons, with the Lord in
the middle . In Luke this image is transformed into the image of two
persons ON two trees, or crosses (stakes). The Lord is still surrounded
by two "trees" with "criminals" hanging on them.
In Luke, one crook rebukes the other. Likewise, in the Buddhist original,
Ānanda rebukes Subhadra for disturbing the Lord who,
understandably, is old and tired.
The two "crooks" next to Jesus , needless to add, were the two
Buddhist monks , Ānanda and Subhadra.

In
both sources, the primary and the secondary, the topic of discussion is
the same: The possibility of going directly to heaven with the Lord. A
pious believer can do so, if he dies in the presence of the Lord. Even
the verb "remember me" used by the false Subhara is in the
San., where it is said that the four places of pilgrimage are to be
remembered (anusmaranīyā, MPS 41:5) by a pious Buddhist. When
we for a moment confine ourselves to Buddhist sources, we can observe that
even here it is not unusual to take up an old theme and introduce
certain variants. Thus, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the MSV we
have the episode of Gautama being impaled on a place of sculls. Here
there are two eggs or sculls, one on each side of the stake. While
hanging on the stake this Gautama is engaged in a conversation with his
former teacher. They, too, talk about the future. This episode has also
left some wonderful traces in Luke. I shall come back to these
later.

The
San. noun for stake is shūlam, which becomes Greek xulon, as in Acts
5:30. Here, the Greek epi xulou is often translated as "to a
cross", but , as the San. shows, it should be "on a
stake". Luke often uses MPS - a part of the MSV - as his source. So
did his learned colleagues, Matthew, Mark and John - not to speak of
Paul. In some cases Luke has an episode not found in Matthew or Mark.
This shows that Luke used MPS/MSV independently. In a few cases the
same goes for Mark. The longest direct loan that I am aware of consists
of 46 syllables. This is Luke 10:38.(See my Geheimnisse um Jesus Christus,
p. 111 for the San. source.) To conclude the episode of the two - or
three - crooks on the crosses, it may be observed that Luke goes on to
tell his incredible tale of how, at twelve o“clock, the sun stopped
shining and darkness covered the whole country until three o“clock... The
source is, again, Buddhist, viz MPS.

The
identification of the Buddhist source of the episode of the crooks on the
crosses not only proves - if proof were needed - that what Luke reports
has nothing to do with actual history somewhere in Jerusalem. The
episode is mythical, as is the original.
Perhaps more important, the identification shows that Luke had a great
sense of humor - typical Buddhist, in fact - that may, however, not be
duly appreciated by all Christians, more pious than the alleged founder
of their religion. Luke must have had great fun turning the two Buddhist
monks into two crooks to be impaled, and later on, in sending Jesus to
hell - not to Paradise! - for a couple of days. For he was
resurrected "from the dead" - the Buddhist term for "from
hell".

In
other words: If the criminal actually did go to Paradise, as Jesus
promised - Jesus would not be there with him! Or, alternatively, if we
construe the "today" with the verb "I say to you",
then it could be that the two would meet at some future date - not today
- in Paradise - and that would be some spot (pradesas) in
India! The episode only makes good sense once one knows the
source. But then it also makes wonderful sense - Aristophanes could not
do better!

Christian Lindtner
December 6th. a. D. 2009

A
CHALLENGE TO ANTI-GEMATRIA HARPIES

In a
communication given to Biblical scholars at Louvain in 1970, the Dutch
theologian J. Smit Sibinga, discussing the literary technique of Matthew,
observed that the author of the First Gospel, consciously and
consistently "arranged his text in such a way, that the size of the
individual sections is fixed by a determined number of syllables. The
individual parts of a sentence, the sentences themselves, sections of a
smaller and larger size, they are, all of them, characterized in a purely
quantitative way by their number of syllables" (Menken, p. 21).

And
how did the scholars present in Louvain react to this observation?
According to a personal communication from one who was present, (Prof.
Birger Gerhardsson, Lund University), "they giggled", and
according to my own experience, scholars as well as non-scholars still
tend to giggle, when they hear that Matthew - and the same goes for the
other authors of the NT, I may add from my own research - always
counted the number of syllables - and words of a sentence or a part
of a sentence.

But
only the insipid laugh when confronted with facts that are new to them.
Serious scholars try to understand facts, no matter how odd they may
appear at first glance.
In his important doctoral dissertation from 1985, Numerical literary
techniques in John, M.J.J. Menken, a student of Smit Sibinga, carried on
this sort of NT research (based on the Greek, of course).

One
of his most important observations was (p. 272):

"The
sum total of syllables or words for a passage is equal to the numerical
value of an important name or title occurring in that passage."

Examples
of this rule:

1.
John 1:19 - 2:11 has a size of 1550 syllables, which number is the
numerical value of ho khristos ("the Christ") - the main person
in that passage.

2.
John 17:1b - 26 contains 486 words, which number is the numerical value
of the vocative pater (father!) , which is found six times in the text.

3.
John 1:1-18 consists of exactly 496 syllables, which is the numerical
value of monogenźs, ("only begotten"), an important
qualification of Jesus. It occurs in John 1:14 & 18, and 3:16 &
18; and 1 John 4:9).

To take just one more example, first pointed out by Smit Sibinga ( cited
by Menken, p. 23):
Peter“s speech in Acts 2:14b - 36 is made up of two equal halves: 444
syllables in 2:14b-24, and again 444 syllables in 2:25-36. Their sum,
888, is the numerical value of the name Iźsous (= 10+8+200+70+400+200 =
888; C.L.) - a number which was famous in this quality in the second
century, witness Irenaeus“ Adversus haereses 1,15,2.
Moreover, if we look upon Acts 2:1-47, a numerical analysis shows that
this chapter as a whole consists of exctly 1776, or 2 x 888 syllables.

These are just a few striking examples, and subsequent research by Smit
Sibinga and myself has shown that their number can easily be
increased, and that the rule, therefore, is correct: The authors of the
NT texts counted numbers of syllables and words.

Quite unexpectedly, the rule that the authors of the Gospels counted
syllables and words, has, through my own research, received support from
another corner of the world: Certain Buddhist canonical Sanskrit
texts - sūtra-s - have, as a numerical analysis reveals - also been
composed by authors who counted syllables and words, yes, in some cases
even letters.

Since
these very sūtra-s can be shown to have influenced the NT in other ways
(parables etc.), it is clear that we here have yet another
independent indication of Buddhist influence in the NT.

WHY these authors did so is another question that future research
is obliged to account for. THAT they counted words and syllables is, to
repeat, a fact that cannot be denied and that must be respected - even by
those who now merely giggle.

The
Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ

In
her most recent essay, The Origins
of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, the
American scholar Acharya S /D.M.Murdock argues, forcefully and boldly, in
favour of the thesis that Jesus was not at all a historical person, but
rather - as so many other sons of God in those days of old - a
personification of the Sun.

In
support of this point of view - one that she is not the first to
advocate, but for which she deserves credit in graciously attending the
advocacy - she adduces Christian as well as non-Christian sources,
primary as well as secondary. Unremittingly, she reminds her readers of
the fact that nearly everything that is said or written about the Jesus
called Christ, had already at an earlier date been reported about the
Buddha - or the Buddhas (too many to count), about Krishna, about Horus,
about Prometheus, and, indeed, about numerous other now less known
mythical figures.

That
this is actually the case, no scholar familiar with Hellenistic religion
and syncretism will be able to deny. Should he venture to deny, as some
still do, then his colleagues can only deplore his ignorance of the
relevant sources. Should anyone, moreover, wish to claim that Jesus - as
opposed to so many other sons of God - is a historical person, then that
defender of the old faith has a very heavy burden of proof resting upon
his shoulders.

Our
theologians, as a rule, simply postulate that there is no reason to doubt
that Jesus was or is a historical person. There may be doubt, they admit,
about the nature of that person, about the credibility of the evangelists
in certain details etc., but about his existence, no, no, there can be no
doubt.

Such
a stand is apologetic and anything but scientific. An appeal to mere
faith is an appeal to sheer ignorance.

Under
such circumstances, our professional historians of religion would be
expected to raise a storm of protest. They do, as a rule, fail to
protest, and their failure is nothing short of a disgrace. Educated
historians ought to enlighten and warn the public that there is neither
solid external or internal evidence in support of the claim that Jesus
was in any way a historical person.

Did
Jesus really exist? - the question is not a new one. The great German
theologian, Adolf Harnack once (back in 1909, before he became von
Harnack) called it "the embarrassing question", i.e. embarrassing
for those who raised it (viz. Kalthoff, Jensen, Drews). We must now say
that von Harnack got it wrong. The question is now embarrassing - and
even more so now than then - for those who fail to account for the lack
of external and internal evidence, and for the parallels that are now
much more numerous and close than they were in 1909. (Adolf Harnack,
"Hat Jesus gelebt?" in: Aus Wissenschaft und Leben, Zweiter
Band, Giessen 1911, pp. 167-175.). Above all, new Buddhist sources, in
Sanskrit, have provided numerous literal parallels, i.e. direct loans.

The
reason for clinging to the myth of Jesus as a historical person is, I
assume, double: First of all, it is not easy to rid oneself of old and
inveterate misconceptions. Such struggle not only requires freedom of
mind but also personal courage - both are rare at a time where a higher
Classical education and civilization with emphasis on human character
have been banned from our universities and now are but remnants of
brighter days.

Then
there is the fear of loss of livelihood. If the story of Jesus is merely
a solar myth - then our priesthood will have lost all its credibility.
Who can make a living by talking about the Sun?

The
edifice of Christianity - in any form it may be - rests on a ground of
nonsense neatly summarized in the Apostles' Creed - that the mother of
Jesus, who went to hell, was a virgin etc. etc.

If
the thesis that Jesus is a mere solar myth is correct - and who is there
to rebuke its validity on solid scholarly grounds? - then this must have
serious consequences not just for conscientious Christian individuals,
but also for a society that considers itself to be Christian in this or
that respect.

The
Danish church - not unlike other Lutheran or reformed churches - considers
itself to be fairly "open and broad, " I am told. But is it
"open and broad" enough to give room for the view that Jesus
never existed, and for infidels taking that stand?

In
Denmark (and elsewhere) we recognize and allow other religions, provided
they do not violate certain rules or standards of decency and decorum -
reflecting a Classical, and not at all a Christian tradition, I may add.
The concept of decency or decorum may not be altogether clear to a modern
mind, but no matter how we agree about definitions, it would be hard to
leave out honesty and truthfulness from that definition. How can we have
decency without honesty?

If,
thus, honesty and truthfulness be recognized as natural and essential
parts of decency and decorum, it follows, surely, that our professional
professors of theology, along with our bishops and our priests find
themselves facing a difficult dilemma: Either they must, openly and
boldly, step forward to defend their honour and refute the thesis that
Jesus be merely a solar myth, or they must, should they choose to remain
silent, fear the disgraceful charge that their lack of honesty - not to
speak of "Lutheran boldness" - makes them violate the standards
of decorum and decency.

In
other words: If our professional theologians do not respond and come up
with strong arguments against the thesis of Jesus as a solar myth, then
they will, day by day, transform the church and Christian society that
for centuries have provided them with even more than their daily bread
into institutions the nature of which is increasingly infested by
dishonesty and lack of decency - until the day of the final and total
collapse of the ancient myth.

New
book expanding on the work done by Dr. Christian Lindtner

This
controversial new book investigates history, religion, linguistics, and numerology
to conclude that all of the Christian teachings of Jesus were sourced
from Buddhism.

Robert
Korczynski holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan with
Majors in Psychology and Sociology, and Minors in Philosophy and
Comparative Religions. He is an avowed Agnostic.

Expanding
on the revolutionary work done by the Danish linguist Christian Lindtner
(CL), Buddha's Big Foot is an academic investigation into the influence
of King Ashoka's Buddhist Missionaries within the religions of the
ancient world; called the, "Dharma Mahamatras," CL translates
their name as, "Officers of the Law." Over generations,
their influence within the Hebrew groups produced the Nazarenes and the
Essenes, and they are the apparent creators of Mandaeaism, the believers
in John the Baptist.

Entrance: 150,00 DKK.

New
books by Christian Lindtner

Geheimnisse um Jesus
Christus

This is a revised and expanded
version of the Swedish book Hemligheten om Kristus.

The new book reveals numerous Buddhist sources of the New
Testament. Based on a careful study of Greek and Sanskrit newly
discovered sources now presented to the public for the first
time. Will appear January 2006. Place your order now:
luehe-verlag@t-online.de

A
Garland of Light. Kambala`s Alokamala

A new edition and translation of a Buddhist philosophical
classic with Sanskrit and Tibetan texts by CL.

A 2004 reprint of the old 1914
classic by the German indologist Richard Garbe. With a new Foreword by
Christian Lindtner in which it is pointed out that the nine syllables of
Revelation 13:18 are a direct translation of one of the most important
sources of the New Testament, namely Sad-dhar-ma-pun-da-rī-ka-sū-tram.

This book
grew out of the comparison of the Biblical texts with the strikingly
similar parallel tales of Greek-Mediterranean Mythology. It sheds new
light on the cunning, deceitful and authoritarian nature of Biblical
religion.

GEMATRIA IN THE GOSPELS

Introduction

One can read the four Gospels of the New Testament, in the original Greek or in a modern translation, and one can study carefully word for word one or more of the numerous modern Gospel commentaries, without ever coming across the term Gematria - and yet without an understanding of Gematria, there can be no real understanding of the true meaning of the fundamental scripturers of Christianity - the 27 books of the New Testament.
An additional obstacle facing the student of the New (as well as the Old) Testament stems from the fact that Gematria is seldom adequately defined in the relevant books of reference. In many standard dictionaries and encyclopedias there is not even an entry for Gematria. (On the other hand there is now no lack of references to Gematria and related matters online.)
The term Gematria is from the Hebrew gymtry´, which, again, is derived from the Greek geômetria, a noun already attested in the Herodotus, in the sense of geometry. Some scholars have, to be sure, suggested a derivation from Greek grammateia, meaning “the office of a scribe”, that of a grammateus, Latin scriba. That derivation, however, is historically wrong, even though it can be argued that it to some extent makes good sense. We can, in fact, by way of Gematria, make sense of grammateia:
Gematria is a method of interpretation or translation. What counts is not so much the sense of words and sentences, but rather the form, i.e. the letters of the word and the sentence with its specific number of syllables.
Now, in Greek as well as in Hebrew, each letter has a numerical value assigned to it: a = 1; b = 2; g = 3; d = 4 ; e = 5 etc. Any grammar of Greek or Hebrew will provide a table showing the numerical value of each letter. This means that the distinction between letters and numbers is not necessarily sharp and clear. Words and sentences not only make sense (or no sense), but they also make numbers. And sometimes these numbers correspond to geometrical figures.
In Gematria, therefore, letters, numbers and geometrical figures are closely related. Gematria means that there is a close connection, even a natural relationship, between language and geometry.
In Hebrew, only the consonants are indicated in writing, whereas the vowels must be supplied by the reader or speaker. This fact, of course, opens up for ambiguities and for confusion - the more so if several languages are involved at the same time. Take, for example, the consonants p-t-r-s. What sense we make out of these four consonants depends not only on the vowels we insert, but also on the language in question. Behind the p-t-r-s we may find the Latin patris, “father´s”. We may also find the Greek name Petros, the modern proper name “Peter”. We may also find the Sanskrit putras, “son”. Or why not the English “pirates”? If we consider that the Aramaic bar means “son” (corresponding to Hebrew bên), we may even say that bar is equivalent to p-t-r-s.
Each consonant has, as said, a given numerical value, in this case 680, i.e. p + t + r + s = 80 + 300 + 100 + 200, giving us the total 680. If we add the vowels, as in Petros, the numerical value is different: 80 + 5 + 300 + 100 + 70 + 200 = 755. Obviously, it makes no difference if the order of the letters is changed. The total sum remains the same in case of such metathesis. In a sense, i.e. in a purely numerical sense, counting the value of the consonants only, Latin pastor or patris is the same as Greek Petros, which again is the same as English pirates, or Sanskrit putras. They are the same in the sense that their numerical value is identical.
From this small example it will be understood, as said, that there is not always a sharp distinction between numbers, figures and letters. We may laugh, shake our heads and find Gematria to be puerile. But we should not forget that Gematria can, as I shall show by some examples, be extremely sophisticated.
Historically speaking, Gematria has played an enormous role - as it certainly still does (cf., for a start, the great number of homepages found online). Also, even if Gematria leads to the most absurd and confused results, this does not mean that those who practice Gematria are themselves confused in their minds. In fact, one must make a sharp distinction between those who know the secrets of Gematria, and the “victims”, who lack the esoteric knowledge required for not becoming dumbfounded. Perhaps, really to create confusion in other minds, one should not be confused at all in one´s own mind. Gemtria, I fear, must be taken serious, very serious.

About the identity of the four evangelists we know next to nothing. They are mere names to us, with some legends - all of them Buddhist, in fact - attached to them. They can only be defined by their work. To judge from the four Gospels transmitted under their names, we can be quite sure that they - or the team behind the names - were profoundly learned and anything but naive savants. We can be sure that they were multilingual. They knew, of course, Greek. They also knew Hebrew and Aramaic. They would have known some Latin, too. This is generally admitted by all scholars.
What is new and certainly not - yet - admitted by scholarly consensus is the fact that they, Matthew etc., also knew Sanskrit. And not only did they know Sanskrit - they knew Sanskrit extremely well.
My thesis - and this is new - is that the Gospels are translations , in the sense of imitations , made directly from the Sanskrit of the Buddhist gospels. What I mean to say is simply what emerges from a close comparative study of the Sanskrit and the Greek texts in question. My thesis is no mere theory or hypothesis; it is a fact that can be observed, controlled, checked and verified. The Greek text of the Gospels imitates the sounds, the sense, the figures and the general structure of their Buddhist source.
The veracity of this thesis, I repeat, can be verified by any scholar who takes the trouble to compare word for word, sentence for sentence the Sanskrit and the Greek sources. It will not do to compare modern translations of the Buddhist texts in question with a modern version of the Greek text. The reason for this has been given above, and it can be summarized in one word: Gematria. One has to pay close attention to each and every consonant, its nature and its number. This is lost in a modern translation.
I am, to be sure, not launching a new theory, or some sensational hypothesis: I am presenting some pieces of a discovery - something that can be verified - or rejected - by other scholars, provided they are willing and prepared to follow in my tracks.
A brief but very clear outline of my thesis has been provided by Julia Messerschmitt in VffG 6 (4) 2002, S. 484-486.
The abbreviations used in connection with the following examples are :

Mt = Matthew; Mk = Mark; Lk = Luke; Jh = John.
The Greek text is easily available, for instance, and most conveniently, in The NIV interlinear Greek-English New Testament, by Alfred Marshall, Grand Rapids, Michigan 1976. Excellent dictionaries , concordances and indices etc. for the study of the New Testament are easily available. Personally, I still prefer the old Lexicon Graeco-latinum in Libros Novi Testamenti, Lipsiae mdccclxxix, auctore Carolo Ludv. Wilibaldo Grimm. A Synopse der drei ersten Evangelien, such as the one by Albert Huck and Hans Lietzmann, Tübingen 1950 (and later), is indispensable.-The original Sanskrit texts are not that easily available, some of them have not even been translated into any modern language, and I will have to refer the interested reader to my forthcoming Sanskrit-Greek Reader for references to the primary Buddhist sources. The Sanskrit-Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden, Göttingen 1973- proves helpful for a start.

1. Peter as a rock etc.

Jh 1:42 has Jesus say to Simôn, the son of John,: “ You are called Kêphas, which is translated Petros”.
Mt 16:17 has Jesus identify the same Petros with a rock, Greek petra, on which he will build his church.
A few words later, Mt 16:17, Jesus identifies Simôn as Bar-iôna, “son of Jona”.

A commentary is called for!
None of all this is fully intelligible unless one knows Gematria.
The numerical value - the Greek term is psêphos, “pebble for counting”, of Kêphas is 20+8+500+1+200 = 729.
Now 729 is an extremely interesting figure. One may start by taking 729 little cubes. Then place 81 cubes in a square that measures 9 x 9.
Now place 8 similar squares, each of which is made up from 9 x 9 cubes, on the top of this. The result is a cube that measures 9 x 9 x 9 = 729: This cube may be taken as a foundation stone.
Then go on to petra in Mt 16:17. The numerical value of petra, “rock” is 80+5+300+100+1 = 486.
Now 486 is also an extremely interesting figure in relation to 729, for the number of squares to be seen on the surface of the cube mentioned above is 9 x 9 x 6 = 486.

This means that when John coined the name Kêphas, he was thinking of a cube, and when Matthew chose the word petra, he, too, was thinking of the same cube. This is Gematria in the sense that names, letters and numbers are directly related to geometrical figures. One sees, without difficulty, that Gematria has its foundation in Greek geômetria.
When it comes to the name of Simôn Petros it is a different story.
Simôn Petros is the name of the first (protos!)disciple of Jesus. The name of the first disciple of the Buddha - often called Tathâgatas - is âyuSMâN (Sâri-) PuTRaS.
So it easy to see, that the name SiMôN PeTRoS has come about by imitating the Sanskrit âyuSMâN PuTRaS. More precisely, the consonants have been imitated in their original order. Who can deny that s-m-n-p-t-r-s = s-m-n-p-t-r-s?
The name of the first disciple of Buddha and Jesus has exactly the same numerical value in Greek as well as Sanskrit.
The Sanskrit putras means “son”. It has nothing to do with the sense “rock” mentioned above. But in the vocative case the Sanskrit putras (nominative) becomes putra, which has exactly the same consonants - and ending - as petra.
What happened is that the evangelists first made Putras into Petros. From Petros - otherwise an extremely rare name in Greek - they got petra, meaning “rock”. From this meaning they invented a new name, the Aramaic “Kêphas”. Quite clearly, the name was designed in order to attain a numerical value corresponding to a geometrical figure.
This means that John is confusing his reader. It is not Kêphas that is translated as Petros, but Petros that is translated as Kêphas. The Petros, as shown, must have come before the Kêphas. Had he had any parents they would hardly have known!
We then learn that Petros was the “son of Jôna”. No other source provides this piece of information - which is even contradicted by Jh 1:42, who makes him the son of Iôannês, not of Iôna.

To solve this puzzle we must again consult the Sanskrit original, which actually makes âyuSMâN (Sâri-) Putras the “son of Jina”. The Sanskrit is Jina-putras. Here, Jina is one of the many synonyms of Tathâgatas, and putras is still “son”.
The noun bar is Aramaic for “son”. And so we can easily see how bar-jôna was invented: The bar translates the sense of putras, and the jôna imitates the sound of Jina. The translation, or imitation, is a hybrid made up by combining sound and sense in one compound.
So Bar-jôna was simply jina-putras, a mode of address used by Tathâgatas in speaking to âyuSMâN (Sâri-) PuTRaS.
Let me end by answering some of my friends who have no problems in identifying âyuSMâN PuTRaS behind SiMôN PeTRoS. But what about the Sâri of the original, they ask. How are we to account for the Sâri?
Consulting the Greek, the answer is simple. In Mt 16:16, Simôn Petros first says, or asks: “You are”, or why not: “Are you” - the Greek is su ei, Latin tu es.
In Sanskrit, the r in Sâri can be considered a semivowel, and as such, be left out. So the su ei contains a pun on Sâri.
Then Jesus replies: “Blessed you are”, makarios ei. Here is yet another pun on Sâri - the -rios in maka- rios. The s-r is equivalent to the s-r.
But there is no end to the puns. In the original, Sâri-Putras is also considered a kumâras, a young prince, the son of Jina. So makarios , “blessed”, also contains a pun on Sanskrit kumâras (k-m-r-s = m-k-r-s). The numerical value of the two words, counting the consonants only, is the same in both languages.
Another name for Sâri-Putras is Upatisyas.
In Sanskrit the second person singular of the verb for “be” is , in the indicative, asi, in the optative syâh, or, depending on the following consonant, syâs. Therefore, the Greek su ei also contains a pun on the Sanskrit for “you are”, asi, and even for “you may be”, syâh/syâs. But that is not all: In the Greek of Mt 16: 18, Jesus says to him, “that you are Petros”, hoti su ei Petros. Here we have a pun not merely on Putras but also on Upatisyas, which itself contains a pun on Sâri-Putras. Also, when Jesus says hoti sarx in Mt 16:17, it is difficult not to hear yet another pun on Upatisyas.

The name Upatisyas has, to sum up, been split up into -syas and -ti- and upa-.
When we ask ourselves why Matthew would want to have “Jesus” make all these puns, the answer is, of course, that this was because that was the way the original source wanted things to be. And Matthew, as said, did his utmost to imitate the Sanskrit original.
In this way we have accounted for âyuSMâN, for Sâri-, for Putras, and for Upatisyas.
The student of the NT Gospels must ask himself the question: Why is it the case that the same people so often are mentioned under so many different names? The answer is always the same: This is due to the fact that the Buddhist sources do so.
Why this is so does not concern us here. What concerns us here is to demonstrate that the Greek imitates the Sanskrit.
We may now pass on to yet another person celebrated under many different names:

2. The name(s) of Jesus

The Greek form of his name is ´ Iêsous. The general opinion, to be found in any dictionary, is that ´Iêsous is the Greek “form”, or the Greek “equivalent” of the Hebrew Joshua (yehôshua).
But actually, ´Iêsous is a rather irregular form.
When we look closer at the irregular form ´Iêsous, the irregularity must also be accounted for.
We cannot, when so doing, fail to note that the numerical value of ´Iêsous is 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888.
Jesus is also known as “Lord”, Greek kyrios.
The numerical value of kurios is 20+400+100+10+70+200, which is exactly 800.
Jesus, as we shall see, is also called “king”, Greek basileus.
The numerical value of basileus is 2+1+200+10+30+5+400+200 = 848.
Mt 3:10 mentions a “dove”, Greek peristera, which is somehow a symbol of the descent of Jesus or the Christ.
The numerical value of peristera is 80+5+100+10+200+300+5+100+1 = 801.
In Mt 11:14 and 16:14, Jesus, or the Christ, is identified with ´Êlias, a name in which the contemporary Greek reader would hear the noun for “Sun”, Greek Hêlios. The numerical value of Hêlios is 8+30+10+70+200 = 318.
These presence of the figures: 888, 800, 848, 801 and 318 referring, in various ways with various connotations, to one and the same person, suggests that the nouns have been designed for their numerical value.
If more examples of the same nature can be adduced to the same effect, we can be sure that these figures are not a matter of sheer coincidence.
In esoteric circles familiar with Gematria, each of these figures is loaded with arcane meaning, having to do, in the final analysis, with the physical figures such as the disk of the Sun etc., i.e. with geometry. Further details do not have to detain us here.
This fact suggests, as said, that the names ´Iêsous and Kyrios etc. have been designed in order to attain a specific and significant numerical value - exactly as in the case of the various names of Putras-Petros. But the evangelists not only paid attention to the numerical value of each significant word having to do with the main actor, the dramatis persona, in the Gospels.
They also paid strict attention to the numerical value of a larger unit of prose wherein that person played the main role.
A beautiful example is provided by Jh 1:19-2:11. It was first pointed out, it seems, by M.J.J.Menken in his book Numerical Literary Techniques in John, Leiden 1985, pp. 43-96.
Jh 1:19-2:11 has the size of exactly 1550 syllables, which is also the numerical value of ho khristos = 70 + 600 + 100 + 10 + 200 + 300 + 70 + + 200 = 1550. The ho khristos is mentioned as such in Jh 1:20 & 1:25. The Christ plays the main role in this unit.
This means that there is a close connection between the numerical value of the most meaningful technical term and the total number of syllables. Form and content are related by a numerical bond.

Another example:
One of the epithets of the Christ is the obscure mono-genês, which occurs in Jh 1:14 & 1:18. It is often translated as “ the only (son)”. The Latin of the Vulgata, is uni-genitus (filius). Luther wrote: “der eingeborene (Sohn)”.
(What the original sense of that obscure and much disputed term is, can only be decided on the basis of the Sanskrit original, which has only recently been identified. I shall come back to this identification on a later occasion in due course.)
Now, what cannot be disputed, is that the numerical value of the Greek monogenês is 40+70+50+70+3+5+50+8+200 = 496. And, again, 496 is not just some odd, or rather: even, number, it is a highly significant figure. It is the “triangular” number of 31, which means that 1+2+3+4+5 etc.+ 31 = 496. Moreover, it is the third known “perfect” number, which means that it is equal to the sum of its divisors:
1+2+4+8+16+31+62+124+248 = 496. It is a triangle.
When John, therefore, chose the obscure term monogenês, there can be no doubt that he did so deliberately, and that he did not do so without at the same time being very much aware of the significant numerical value of that word.
There are many other similar examples to the same effect. It was therefore quite true when another Dutch theologian, Smit Sibinga, already in 1970 wrote, speaking about Matthew in particular, that he, “...arranged his text in such a way, that the size of the individual sections is fixed by a determined number of syllables. The individual parts of a sentence, the sentences themselves, sections of a smaller and larger size, they are, all of them, characterized in a purely quantitative way by their number of syllables” (cited from Menken, op. cit., p. 21). Subsequent research has shown beyond any doubt that Smit Sibinga´s remarkable observation also applies to all the other books in the New Testament.

3. Jesus Christ

It is certainly the common and undisputed opinion that Khristos is the Greek translation of Messiah (mâshîah; Aram. meshîhâ´), meaning “anointed (as king)”.
Nevertheless, this view, found in any work of reference, is invalid and highly misleading :
First of all, we never hear about Jesus having been anointed as king. So how can he be regarded as having been anointed as king? Who did it? When? Where? - We are never told.
Also, it is a great paradox that Jesus was considered a king - the king of the Jews or of Israel - even though, as said, he had never been anointed as such. And how could he, moreover, be a king, how could he inherit a kingdom, if his father was no king and his mother no queen? Second, while it is true that Greek khristos translates the sense of messiah, “anointed”, the form messiah utterly fails to account for the
form khristos. The two words are not at all spelled in the same way.
The Sanskrit original, a famous Buddhist text, gives the solution to the puzzle.
To repeat myself: How do we account for the form, the spelling of khristos - the kh-r-s-t-s? And how do we account for the fact that a ho , “the”, is sometimes added, sometimes omitted?
The story of Jesus, from his birth to his death, is, from beginning to end, in all respects a clear imitation of the legend of the Tathâgatas from his birth to his death.
Now, Tathâgatas was born as a ksatriyas, a nobleman, he was the son of a king, his mother was a queen, and he was, for some time, expected to become king himself. He was even anointed (abhisiktas), exactly as his predecessors, one of whom, Gautamas, is reported to have died under exactly the same circumstances that Jesus, the king of the Jews, and of Israel, is reported to have died.
Very often, as known, Jesus is not called khristos, but ho khristos, “the Christ”.
(The same goes for the name of Jesus: Sometimes he is called “the Jesus”, sometimes merely “Jesus”.) Sometimes two syllables, sometimes three syllables. In modern translations of the New Testament, the distinction is usually lost.
Looking at the consonants in ksatriyas, it is not difficult to see that khristos is a direct imitation of the Sanskrit: k-s-t-r-s = kh-r-s-t-s. The imitation is absolutely perfect. By adding the ho in Greek, the total number of syllables is 3, as in the Sanskrit original: ksa-tri-yas. The khristos accounts for the sense and for the consonants; the expanded form ho khristos accounts for the number of syllables. Once we see that khristos as well as ho khristos are simply perfect imitations of the sound and the sense of the Sanskrit ksatriyas, many other old puzzles find a simple solution.
A very famous passage, Mt 16:13-20, ends with the words: “ Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ”. We must ask ourselves, why he so much wanted his identity to be kept a secret?

This so-called “secret of Messiah” has always puzzled its interpreters. No unanimity has been reached about why in the world Jesus would want to keep his identity as “the Christ” a secret.
The solution is a simple as can be: That the Greek ho khristos was the same as the Sanskrit ksatriyas had to be kept secret.
Otherwise people would understand that the Gospel was translated from the Sanskrit, and that the Khristos, the ho Khristos was simply the Buddhist ksatriyas.
It goes without saying that the Buddhist ksatriyas was born under the same circumstances as the Jewish impersonator, the ho Khristos was, much later on.
Who, then, would, if this were not kept a secret, believe Jesus to be the king of Israel, or the king of the Jews? Who would believe him to be a new Moses? Some readers may ask whether the unknown authors of the Gospels would really be up to such tricks?

The answer is simple: The Tathâgatas himself is presented as saying that he appears in various forms of disguise, and that he accomodates his language and his external appearance to those familiar to his audience. To noblemen he appears disguised as a nobleman. To demons disguised as a demon etc. etc. The Tathâgatas, in brief, assimilates himself and his teachings, his Dharma, to local and prevailing circumstances etc. The Jews, to whom Matthew is primariliy addressed expected a Messiah. What they got, was the Buddhist ksatriyas disguised as ho Khristos.

4. Son of God etc

Jesus is a often addressed as the son of God, or as the son of David.
The epithets are, in both cases, highly confusing:
How can he be the son of God and the son of David at the same time?
A plain physical and a chronological impossibility!
If he is the son of God, how can he be the son of David, who is not God?
How can he, at the same time, have several fathers - Josef, the so-called Holy Spirit (whatever that is), or even Abraham (Mt 1:1). - i.e. in addition to God and David? At least five different farthers at the same time! If we add that he was also “the son of Man” - whoever that “man” may have been - then he has at least six different fathers!
These and similar absurdities are instantly solved in the light of the original Sanskrit.
A ksatriyas is commonly addressed as a deva, “god”, or deva-putra, “son of god”.
Since Jesus , as ho khristos, was also originally a ksatriyas, one would expect the evangelists to use deva and deva-putra as modes of address also.

And they did.
Sanskrit deva-putras becomes “son of god”. Sanskrit deva is “god”, putras is “son”.
Sanskrit deva-putras also becomes “son of David”. Here the deva- becomes Davi(d). By merely adding a -d, a Sanskrit noun has been assimilated to the proper name of the celebrated Jewish king David.
Since, for the Jews, David was the king, and since Sanskrit deva(s) also means “king”, - the god as king - there is a double pun: Sanskrit deva covers the sound as well as the sense of David, as a proper name and as the king, at the same time. It is a name and a title at the same time. The ambiguity is deliberate, and very typical of Matthew.

In the original there is, of course, not merely one deva-putras. There are as many as there are gods and kings.
This fact permits us to solve yet another old puzzle in the New Testament:
In Mt 5:8, Jesus speaks of many “ sons of God”.
But how can that be, if Jesus is supposed to be the (only) son of God? Apparently, God can have many sons? What, then, is so unique about the Jesus?

The solution is, of course, that there can be many “sons of God”, because there are many deva-putras in the original source. The Greek is only intelligible if one understands the Sanskrit behind the Greek.
Mt 5:9, as it stands, makes but little sense: “ Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”.
What sort of peace do these people make? Who were actually called “sons of God”. Why would one be “blessed” merely by being “called” by a strange title that is , as said, never actually attested, in the plural, in the Gospels? Is Jesus making fun of his disciples? Is it mere mockery? How can poor fishermen, seriously speaking, be expected to be called “sons of God”? Later on ,to be sure, he calls them “evil”, Mt 7:11.

All this is highly confusing.
But not so in the light of the original Sanskrit.
I started out by pointing out the patent absurdity that Jesus is supposed to have had at least six different fathers at the same time!
By identifying the deva-putras behind the “son of God” and the “son of David”, it has been possible to reduce the number of his suspected fathers to four.
Let us be patient and see what further research may have to report about the true identity of the remaining four suspects of fatherhood! Looking at the sense of Mt 5:9, the point was that under certain circumstances the disciples would be called “sons of god”. What these circumstances really were, can only be ascertained in the light of the original. It is a fundamental doctrine of the Buddhists that by doing good karma one may be reborn as a god among other sons of god in heaven, or as a king.
In other words, Mt 5:9 only makes sense in the light of the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth. By doing good karma they will become reborn as gods, sons of god(s), or kings.
But Matthew fails to let Jesus provide the missing link.

5. Tathâgatas

It is also a fundamental doctrine of Buddhist preachers and missionaries that one should “take” the Tathâgatas (accusative : Tathâgatam), and not “reject” the Tathâgatam.
The idea that mere faith in the Tathâgata is sufficient for bringing about salvation, is a fundamental persuasion of Mahâyâna Buddhism - as opposed to early Buddhism (“Hînayâna”), where the emphasis is on knowledge and understanding.
The evangelists follow Mahâyâna.
From what we now know about the evangelists we would not be surprised to discover many puns on the sense, the sound and the numerical value of the word Tathâgatas (or Tathâgatam etc.).
First of all, the numerical value of Tathâgatas is, according to the Greek mode of alphabetical calculation: 300+1+9+1+3+1+300+1+200 = 816. Hardly surprising, 816 turns out - just as the figures or numbers associated with Jesus, kurios etc. - to be a significant number indeed. 816 is exactly 2/3 of 1224, and 1224 is intimately connected with one of the roles played by Jesus in John.
Without getting ourselves lost in the astonishing details (apparently first pointed out by John Michell in his book City of Revelation, London 1972), we may say that “the fishes” and “the net” mentioned in Jh 21:1-14 are somehow symbolical of Jesus. The same goes for the 153 great fishes in Jh 21:11.
The Greek for “the fishes” is ikhthues, and the numerical value of ikhthues is 10+600+9+400+5+200 = 1224.
The Greek for “the net” is to diktuon. The numerical value of to diktuon is 300+70+4+10+20+300+400+70+50 = 1224.
The figure 153 is rationally related to 1224, for 8 x 153 = 1224.
Or, 153 is 1/8 of 1224.
Moreover, 153 is the sum of 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17 = 153. A triangle, again.

Likewise, when we go back to the Buddhist source, where the numerical value of the main person, the Tathâgatas, also turns out to be rationally related to the figure 1224. The numerical value of Tathâgatas is, as said, 816 , which is exactly 2/3 of 1224. The age of Tathâgatas is calculated, in the Buddhist source, as 30 years minus 1 plus 50, i.e. 3-1-5: the same as 1-5-3, the number of great fishes, indicating Jesus. According to Gematria 1+5+3 = 3+1+5 etc., just as a+b = b+a etc.
Similar figures are given for the age of Jesus, but in a very confused manner. Jh 8:57 says that he is not yet 50 years old. Lk 3:23 says that he is almost 30 - which would mean that he is still 29. So, combining these two figures we arrive at exactly the same age as the one given for Tathâgatas.
John and Luke are totally confusing if one does not have the original Sanskrit at hand.
But that is by no means all.
The Buddhist source gives the number of disciples of the Tathâgatas as 1200 , but also as 72 koti-niyuta - an astronomical figure, where niyuta is a myriad, and koti is ten millions . Jesus has 12 disciples, but according to Lk 10:17, he also has 72 (with the variant reading: 70).
Lk 12:1 has a nice pun on niyuta as well as koti - a fact that proves that the astronomical figure, and thereby also the Buddhist source, was not at all unknown to him.
For obvious reasons, the evangelists chose to reduce the original figures, simply by removing the decimals.
According to Gematria the numerical value of 12 is the same as the numerical value of 1200 (1+2 = 1+2+0+0 etc.). The decimal does not count. In the Buddhist source, these 72 ten millions myriads are said “not to return”; in Luke they are said “to return”.
The number of disciples is, in both sources and in both cases, also chosen with an eye on the basic significant figure: 1224, for 17x 72 = 1224, and 102 x 12 = 1224.
All this means that the evangelists imitate the Buddhist sources.
The numerical values associated with Jesus and with Tathâgatas, and with their disciples, are, in other words, intimately asociated with the figure 1224.
There is much more to be said about the figure 1224. Suffice it here to repeat that 1/8 of 1224 is related to the age of Tathâgatas; 1/17 as well as 1/102 is related to the number of his disciples; and 2/3 is related to the numerical value of his title: Tathâgatas.
All these numerical speculations may seem puerile, as said. Whether such a judgement is true or false, I shall not say. But what can be said for certain - and experience shows that it neeeds to be said - is that it is most puerile to deny that the concerns of Gematria has formed the shape and form of the words and sentences in the Buddhist as well as the Christian gospels.

The evangelists also had a lot of fun, puerile perhaps, punning on the word Tathâgatam. Here are but a few examples among many, and they prove once again that the Buddhist source is also the primary source.

Mt 23:10: Jesus is to be addressed as the only kathêgetês, the rare noun meaning didaskalos, “teacher”. The Buddha is also to be addressed as the only Tathâgatas, one of the many meanings of which is “teacher”.

ho agathos is a pun on tath-âgatas. And Tathâgatas is, indeed, the only good man.

Mt 25:28: He has the ten talents, ta deka talanta - he has the Tathâgatam (t-th-g-t-m = t-d-k-t-n). He is , again, valuable.

Mt 27:65: You have a guard, koustôdian - they have Tathâgatam , or Tathâgatas (t-th-g-t-m = k-s-t-d-n; for n is a dental like t(h)). And Tathâgatas is, indeed, a guard. In the Buddhist sources, Tathâgatas is often called a guardian or protector.

. Mt 14:19: He takes the two fishes, tous duo ikhthuas - Tathâgatas offers himself as an object, Tathâgatam, as in Mt 26:26-29 (t-th-g-t-m = t-d-s- kh-th-s). The two fishes are, moreover, a common symbol of Tathâgatas and of the Christ. Moreover, in Gematria, the figure 1224 is intimately related to the fishes.

Mt 4:20 - 21 : The first disciples left the nets, ta diktua, but they also prepared the nets - first the five disciples left Tathâgatas, but then they received him again (t-th-g-t = t-d-k-t). At the same time, the net is a symbol of Jesus as well as of Tathâgatas, as pointed out above.

Mt 22:21: One must render the (what?) of Caesar to Caesar, and the (what?) of the god to the god, ta Kaisaros Kaisari kai ta tou theou tô theô - yes, one must render homage etc. to the ksatriyas and to tathâgatas.

Mt 17:11-12: Playing the role of Elias = Helios, He is the one who will come, and, at the same time, the one who already has come - no wonder, for tathâ plus âgatas means “the one who has come”, and tathâ plus a-gatas means “the one who has not come but who will come.”

Lk 10:42 : For Mary chose the good part, tên agathên merida - yes, for she chose to listen to the Tathâgatam (t-th-g-t-m = t-n-g-th-n; n again being a dental replacing t), when he paid her a visit in Vaisâlî. Here she listened to his Dharma - the “part”, Greek merida (dh-r-m = m-r-d).

So, to conclude: It is all a matter of listening to (the word) Tathâgatam/s.
The Buddhist source in question (Q=SDP) confirms that by merely repeating or listening to the word Tathâgatas, one will, eventually, obtain salvation.
It was this belief that made the evangelists repeat the name of Tathâgatas.
For centuries pious Christians have been repeating the name of Tathâgatas - without knowing it.
Whether they have reached salvation or not - that is another question.
According to Mahâyâna, one is saved merely by reciting the name of Tathâgatas - or one of his numerous other names and titles.
With this in mind we shall also understand the following:

6. The New Testament

The New Testament is, needless to say, the title of a body of individual books, 27 in all. But why the New Testament is called the New Testament, and why it comprises exactly 27 different writings within its body, is another question to which scholars have not yet provided any satisfactory answers.
In the Introduction to his learned, but also traditionally naive standard work, The Canon of the New Testament. Its Origin, Development, and Significance, Oxford 1987, Bruce M. Metzger observes: “ The recognition of the canonical status of the several books of the New Testament was the result of a long and gradual process, in the course of which certain writings, regarded as authoritative, were separated from a much larger body of early Christian literature. Although this was one of the most important developments in the thought and practice of the early Church, history is virtually silent as to how, when, and by whom it was brought about. Nothing is more amazing in the annals of the Christian Church than the absence of detailed accounts of so significant a process.”
This is true and this is remarkable, and, in itself, a real problem. When its comes to the early formation of the New Testament - often considered the very Word of God, nothing less - it is worth repeating, that we are left in the dark as to how, when, and by whom it was brought about.
If the New Testament really is the Word of God - how, then, can it be that God made up his mind to leave posterity in deep ignorance as to how, when and by whom it was brought about?
Was God simply incapable of doing so, or did he have his reasons for keeping the origins of the New Testament a profound secret? And, if so, why? -
Such are some of the questions we are obliged to ask.
To this day, theologians have been unable to solve the puzzle.
First, I will take up the question of the title: The New Testament, in Greek hê kainê diathêkê.
There can be no doubt that the title of the New Testament somehow has to be traced back to the words of Jesus during the The Last Supper:

Mt 26: 28: touto gar estin to haima mou tês diathêkês, “for this is the blood , of mine, of the covenant”.
These obscure words are repeated by the second evangelist, Mark, leaving out only the gar, “for”:
Mk 14:24 : touto estin to haima mou tês diathêkês, “this is the blood, of mine, of the covenant.”

The words of Jesus as reported by the third evangelist are quite different:
Lk 22:20: touto to potêrion hê kainê diathêkê en tô haimati mou, “ This cup (is) the new covenant in the blood of mine”.
These no less obscure words, with the mou, “of mine”, in the odd position, are supported by Paul:
1 Cor 11:25: touto to potêrion hê kainê diathêkê estin en tô emô haimati, “ This cup is the new covenant in my blood”.
These words are familiar to all who attend services in church, and there is no end to the speculations and resulting controversies that their obscurity have given rise to for almost two millennia. Heretical views as to their proper meaning have incited bloodshed beyond measure - as if in ominous fulfilment of the the immediately following words about the blood, “which is poured out for many” .

Familiarity with the Sanskrit language and with the Buddhist sources could have saved pious souls from confusion and cruelty without end. The Buddhist source is , again, the Mahâparinirvânasûtra, quite precisely Mps 42:10, which reports the words of Tathâgatas to his disciples during his last reported supper.
The Sanskrit for “last supper” is pascimam pindapâtam, Mps 29:6. The Sanskrit pascimam means “last”. Very nicely, its first two syllables are assimlated to those of the Greek paskha, “easter, passover”. The phrase in Mt 26:17 is the odd phagein to paskha, “to eat the passover”. In Mt 26:18 Jesus says, pros se poiô to paskha, “ In front of you, I will do the passover”. The passover is also the final meal; the to pasha, in 3 syllables renders Sanskrit pascimam.
During the final supper in the Mps, Tathâgatas first invites his disciples, the monks, “to look at, to behold” the body of the Tathâgatas. In Matthew, the original invitation “to look at, to behold” becomes an invitation “to eat , to drink”. As in the original, there is no “and”. It is the same group of disciples that are invited to so, under the same circumstances, and at the same point , in the same place, in the same gradual course of events.
If we take the trouble to count the number of words and the number of syllables in both sources, we arrive at interesting results: First the Buddhist source: Mps 42:10 evidently belongs to a unit formed by Mps 42:9-12. The introduction are the words of the redactor. The number of words from the mouth of Tathâgatas is exactly 30. The number of syllables is exactly 99, which is the significant Buddhist number 108 minus 9 = 99.

See more about the number 108, infra, under 8.
Then the NT source: Exactly as Mps, Matthew has counted the words and the syllables having to do with the Last Supper. The total number of words put into the mouth of Jesus, beginning with labete in Mt 26:26, ending with mou in Mt 26:29 is 54. The total number of syllables is 108 - the Buddhist number.
Quite clearly, the unknown editor of the Mps considered not only the number of words and syllables, but also their mutual ratio. And exactly the same observation applies to the unknown editor that we call Matthew: He not only counted the number of words and syllables as well as their mutual ratio - but he also did this in the light of the Buddhist source. He not only imitatated the numerical pattern of the original. He also imitated the individual words, their sounds and their sense, as well as the structure of the unit in question - the Last Supper . Moreover, he even imitated the position of that celebrated episode in the body of the text as a whole - the Last days of Tathâgatas.

Let us now that we have identified the Sanskrit source, come back to the origin of the title of The New Testament - the hê kainê diathêkê!

In Mps 42:10 the focus is, for sure, on the body of Tathâgatas - the Sanskrit is Tathâgatasya kâyam, the body (kâyam) of (the) Tathâgatas.
The tathâgata-sya is the genitive form (-sya). The kâyam is the object in the sentence. Being the direct object of the two transitive verbs avalokayata, “look at”, and vyavalokayata, “behold”, it is, of course, in the accusative case. The number of syllables of these two imperative forms is 2 x 6, corresponding to the number of syllables in the two Greek imperatives labete, “take”, and phagete, “eat”, 2 x 3 syllables.

There is a ratio 1:2, exactly as there is in Matthew, as pointed out, the same 1:2 ratio between the number of words and syllables in the mouth of Jesus, namely 54:108.
The Sanskrit text, Mps 42:11, adds yet another imperative, likewise second person plural: bhavata. This form, bha-va-ta, “be you”, is also imitated by the la-be-te and the pha-ge-te.
With these two words - tathâgatasya kâyam - in mind, it is not difficult to see that the tês diathêkês in Matthew is to be identified as a direct imitation of 1) the sound, 2) the sense, 3) the case, 4) the number of syllables, and 5) the position of Sanskrit tathâgatasya. So, to be quite sure, the Greek tês diathêkês translates, or imitates, the Sanskrit tathâgatasya as follows:

1) The sound is imitated by Matthew, for tês diathêkês consists of the consonants t-s-d-th-k-s, where the original Sanskrit consists of the consonants t-th-g-t-s. Needless to say, t, th, and d are dentals, whereas k and g are gutturals, and s - of which Matthew has one extra - is a sibilant. - The fact that tathâgatasya is here imitated is independently supported by the imitations of tathâgatas/m pointed out supra, under 5.

2) The sense is also imitated: The Sanskrit compound tathâgatas/m is open to several interpretations. There is absolutely nothing to prevent us from taking tathâ, meaning “thus”, along with gatam, “gone”, in the sense of “understood”, or âgatam, as “arrived at”. The compound as a whole, therefore also means “ thus agreed upon”, i.e., as a substantive, an agreement, a covenant. This, then, smoothly accounts for the sense of hê diathêkê, “the agreement, the covenant”.

3) The case is the same, namely genitive.

4) The number of syllables is the same in Sanskrit and in Greek, namely 5.

5) The position of tathâgatasya is the same as that of tês diathêkês, namely subordinate to kâyam, just as tês diathêkês is subordinate to to haima, “the blood”.

This brings us to the next step - namely to account for the fact that the to haima of Matthew and Mark is replaced by hê kainâ diathêkê in Luke and Paul.
Now that we have identified the original source, a simple explanation offers itself:
The Greek haima, “blood”, and the Greek kainê, “new”, are but two different versions of one and the same Sanskrit word, namely kâyam.
How so?
Among the Jews, to whom Matthew addressed his gospel, “blood” was a simple synonym of “body”. This is well-known, and the expression “ the blood of the covenant” is therefore but a translation of the Sanskrit tathâgatasya kâyam, “the body of Tathâgatas”.
The Greek kainê, said of the covenant in Luke and Paul, is yet another version of the Sanskrit kâyam. Here, it must be kept in mind that in Sanskrit y is a semivowel. As such, it can be taken either as a vowel or as a consonant. Taken as a vowel it need not be indicated in writing. The n in the Greek kainê is a nasal, exactly as the m in the Sanskrit kâyam, “body”, is a nasal. So the n of the Greek represents the m of the Sanskrit . Both words consist of two syllables only. Both words say something about the covenant.
Clearly, therefore, hê kainê diathêkê is a variant version of the original Sanskrit: tathâgatasya kâyam. It has the same number of syllables, namely 7.

We can say that haima and kainê are interpretations of the same kâyam, “body”.
That this is so is further supported, in plain words, by Mt 26:26, where Jesus says: touto estin to sôma mou, “This is my body”. The same identification is found in Mk 14: 22, and in Lk 22:19.
Here the sôma, body” is a simple synonym of Sanskrit kâyam, “body”.
Now we also understand the touto estin to, in 5 syllables: It contains a pun on tathâgatasya of the original, also 5 syllables in the same position.
Luke and Paul, it will be recalled, introduced a cup - touto to potêrion, “this the cup”. The to potêrion in itself consists of 5 syllables, forming a pun on the 5 syllables of tathâgatasya. Adding the touto we get 7 syllables, forming a pun on the entire original phrase: tathâgatasya kâyam, also 7 syllables.
And the pun in the Greek is not merely a pun on the words, the syllables and the rythm of the original.
The cup also contains the body of Tathâgatas.
Jesus identifies himself with the body of the Tathâgatas.
The name of Tathâgatas, the Dharma of Tathâgatas are now to be found in the body of the New Testament.

Therefore - and this is the answer to the initial question about the obscure origin of the body of the New Testament -
The New Testament is the Body of the Tathâgatas.

In the Buddhist sources, the Body of the Tathâgatas is often identified with the Body of his Dharma.
The New Testament contains the name and the Dharma of the Tathâgatas, and Jesus even identifies himself with the Body of Tathâgatas.
No title for the body of the 27 books could, therefore, be more appropriate than - hë kainê diathêkê:
It is new in the sense that the body of the Tathâgatas is a true innovation, something entirely new, in the Jewish context into which it was smuggled.

This is a historical truth, but also a truth that simply had to be hidden , but without being denied.
For this purpose the use of Gematria proved serviceable.
Its historical origin had, at all costs, to be kept secret.
It was - to this day. Those who were initiated, knew what those, who were not, did not.

One final observation, now that we are speaking of Gematria, and in order to conclude these observations on the true identity of Jesus etc. in a nice orderly or geometrical fashion:
The numerical value of tathâgatas is - no harm repeating: 300+1+9+1+3+1+300+1+200 = 816.
The numerical value of kâyam, also according to the Greek calculation, is : 20+1+10+1+40 = 72.
When we add 816 + 72 we arrive at 888.
As I have just shown, Jesus identified himself with tathâgatas, or with the body of Tathâgatas - which is much the same thing.
And when we now recall that the numerical value of ´Iêsous is 10+8+200+70+400+200 = 888,
then we have a new and independent proof that the Jesus is not different from tathâgatas and his body.
Those who may want to deny this identification will also be inclined to deny that the sum of 816 plus 72 is 888, or that 888 is identical with 888.

PS: When I had concluded these observations, I had not yet been able to account fully for the very strange Greek phrase shared by Matthew and Mark: to haima mou, “the blood mine”. All Greek scholars will admit that the mou, “(of) mine” is most disturbing and awkward in this position. There must be a special reason for Matthew having written it, and for Mark having endorsed it ( - for Mark came after, not before, Matthew). The mou kept me sleepless.

The solution, I suspected, could perhaps be found in Gematria.
Considering the numerical value of the phrase to haima mou we get: 300 + 70 + 1 + 10 + 40 + 1 + 40 + 70 + 400 = 932.
What is so special about the number 932?
Does it, perhaps, refer to one of the many synonyms of the Tathâgatas - a reasonable question to ask, considering the context?
One of the most frequently mentioned names or titles of the ksatriyas or Tathâgatas is Sâkya-munis.
There are quite a few puns on Sâkya-munis in the Gospels - the happiest is probably Mt 21:19: sukên mian, and monon (the accusative of -munis is munim) - the source of which is also Q = Mps, where Tathâgtas is compared to a fig tree.
The numerical value of Sâkya-munis is : 200+1+20+10+1+40+400+50+10+200 = 932 - exactly the same as the numerical value of to haima mou.

To repeat:
The numerical value of to haima mou is 932.
The numerical value of Sâkya-munis is 932.
This identification, it goes without saying, is in perfect harmony with the fact that the numerical value of tathâgatas plus kâyam = 888, which, as said, was also the numerical value of ´Iêsous = 888.

So, what Matthew and Mark are saying is that:
Tathâgatas is Sâkyamunis, Tathâgatas. At the same time they are identifying Jesus with the Body of Tathâgatas, as already pointed out.
The awkwark mou was, in other words, inserted for the sake of the numerical value of Sâkyamunis - according to the Greek mode of alphabetical calculation.
They started out with Tathâgatas, with Sâkyamunis and with Tathâgatasya kâyam, then they determined the numerical value of these basic terms. The next step was to find Greek words having the same numerical value.
The result was: Tathâgatas is Sâkyamunis, the Body of Tathâgatas.
This is what the enigmatic Greek sentence touto (gar) estin to haima mou tês diathêkês really means - if one knows Gematria.

7. Ten virgins

Mt 25:1-13 - the parable of the ten virgins - undoubtedly forms a unit in its own right. The parable only occurs in Matthew. There is nothing corresponding in Mark, Luke or John.
What interests us here is the external form and structure of the passage - not the interpretation of the parable as such. Philology first, theology second.
Without really knowing what to make of it, other scholars - beginning with Smit Sibinga, a Dutch theologian - have already drawn attention to the striking structure of the passage as a whole:
There are 13 verses. The total number of syllables in 1-12 amounts to exactly 350 (= 5x 70). The final verse, Mt 25:13, consists of exactly 20 syllables.
Clearly, Matthew counted the syllables.
But there is more: Verse 7, from the point of view of sense and of position, forms the center of the narrative: “ Then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps”. The number of syllables is 27.
Verse 1 consists of 47 syllables, and corresponds to verse 12, which also consists of 47 syallbles. Verses 2 and 3 consist of 40 syllables, and correspond to verses 10, which also consists of 40 syllables. Verses 4 and 5 consist of 45 syllables, and correspond to verse 9, which also consists of 45 syllables.. Verse 6 has 27 syllables, whereas verse 8 has 32 syllables. In the middle, as said, we have verse 7, consisting of 27 syllables.
This means that the story as a whole is arranged geometrically, with a unit of 27 entities in the center. One must be prejudiced not to admit this fact.
Behind the numbers we are entitled to see a sort of concentric pattern, with the significant figure 27 in the focus.
This is a good example of what Gematria means.

The fact that the parable of the ten virgins is also an imitation of a celebrated Buddhist parable, has escaped all previous researchers. Matthew does not imitate the size of the original, but he imitates the sound and the sense of the basic concept, which is (a)pramâdas, as well as the key terms attested in the original source - the celebrated Mahâparinirvânasûtra, Chapter 4. This sûtra - one of the synonyms of evangelium, “good message” - is also the source of many other incidents related in the Gospels.
During a visit to Pâtaliputra - the ta Pali(m)bothra of the ancient historians (Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, Arrianus), the present Patna - Tathâgatas delivers a sermon on Dharma, “the Law”. The audience consists of brâhmanas, “priests”, and grha-patis, “house-holders”. An initial distinction is made between pramâdas, “inattention”, and a-pramâdas, “attention”.
Five kinds of disaster (âdînavas) are associated with pramâdas (Mps 4:6-11), and five kinds of benefits (ânusamsâ) are, likewise, mutatis mutandis, associated with a-pramâdas (Mps 4:12-17). There is an Introduction (Mps 4: 1-5), as well as a Conclusion (Mps 4:18-20, or - 5:1) First of all we note that the Buddhist original also displays a concentrical structure, just like Matthew. The pattern is exactly the same. It first deals with the five kinds of disaster associated with pramâdas, and, having reached the middle, or center, it goes on with the five kinds of benefit associated with a-pramâdas.
Moreover, the basic topic is exactly the same: One has to “keep watch”, one must be attentive - otherwise... Both sources advise us to be attentive.
Matthew speaks of the ten virgins, parthenois (the instrumental = dative form).
Here the apramâdas as well as the pramâdas - 5+5 = 10 cases in the original - have become the ten parthenois (p-r-m-d-s = p-r-m-d-s = p-r-th-n-s).
Five prudent virgins and five foolish virgins take their lampadas, “lamps”.
Here the apramâdas as well as pramâdas - 5+5 = 10 cases in the original - become lampadas in the Greek (p-r-m-d-s = p-r-m-d-s = l-m-p-d-s). (The r in the original has become l in the Greek - a frequent phenomenon, as when râjâ is spelled lâjâ, “king”; r is replaced by an equivalent l.)

So, to be sure, behind the 5+5 parthenois, and behind the 5+5 lampadas we have, in both cases the 5+5 pramâdas and a-pramâdas.
Five of them are described as “prudent”, phronimoi, from phronimos. The sense and the sound of phronimos (in verse 10 we have the form phronimois) is directly based on the Sanskrit brâhmanas, “a priest” - generally considered “wise, prudent”.
Choosing phronimos, it is quite impossible to suggest a happier rendering of brâhmanas (b-r-h-m-n-s = ph-r-n-m-s).
Then we have the bridegoom, who is late, the numphios. He, too, is a sort of respectable person.
In Indian dialects related to Sanskrit, an r is often lost, or replaced by another “semivowel”, e.g. l, as above.
With this fact in mind, it is easy to see that numphios is also based on the brâhmanas of the original (b-h-m-n-s = n-m-ph-s).
So, the pattern is exactly the same as above: just as parthenois and lampadas are but variant versions of apramâdas/pramâdas, thus phronimos and numphios are but variant renderings of brâhmanas.
In the original, to be sure, the Tathâgatas is often described as a true brâhmanas.
In verse 9, the prudent ones ask the stupid ones to go “to those selling”, pros tous pôlountas. The Greek text omits the direct object of the verb for selling. It does not tell us what they are selling. Of course, it is understood that they are selling oil, but the text does ot explicitly say so. We must account for this irregularity, of course.
As said, the episode originally took place in the city Pâtaliputras, 5 syllables.
And so it is easy to see, or hear, that pros tous pôlountas is intended to provide a pun on Pâtaliputras: When they are asked to go pros tous pôlountas, they are in fact asked to go to Pâtaliputras, also 5 syllables.
The pun on Pâtaliputras in Matthew is good, but not perfect. More happy are the puns on Pâtaliputras found in Mk 13:1: potapoi lithoi, “what great stones” and, again, Mk 13:2: lithos epi lithon, “stone on stone”. The original, which is Mps 5:12, offers similar puns. At the time of the visit of Tathâgatas the place was still a village, under construction for fortification. Hence the many stones, turning the old village into a polis, or an oppidum.
There are several other Greek puns on the original Sanskrit in this parable, but I think these examples are sufficient to demonstate the method of imitation employed by Matthew.
If we know the Sanskrit original we can, without too much difficulty, make good sense of the parable of the ten virgins. If we do not know the Sanskrit original, the parable is open to numerous interpretations - even obscene ones.
Let us, let the wise men in the proverb, fear to tread where fools rush in!

8. The number 108 etc

For reasons that need not detain us here, the figure 108 is one of the most significant ones in Buddhism.
On the other hand, the figure 108 is never mentioned explicitly in the Old Testament. Nor is it mentioned explicitly in the New Testament. When we start counting words and syllables in the Gospels, we shall, however, find that the number 108 - and its divisors etc. - is one of the most significant figures in the New Testament as well.
This suggests that 108 is not a “Jewish” figure, but rather a Buddhist, and an Indian one, too.
Let us see! And let us not forget that the New Testament is the Body of Tathâgatas.
The New Testament, as a whole, consists of exactly 27 books. We have no exact idea about where, when and by whom this figure was chosen. But we have a good idea about why it was chosen.
Quite a few Buddhist scriptures (sûtra) consist of 27 chapters. This also goes for one of the main sources of the Gospels, namely the Saddharmapundarîkasûtra - the famous Lotus Sûtra. I have not here in this brief communication pointed out the numerous allusions to that crucial text in the New Testament. (For the proof, which is irrelevant in the present context, I must ask the reader to consult the book Hemligheten om Kristus.)

In the New Testament many different numbers are explicitly mentioned, but 27 is not among them. The same, as said, goes for the number 108. The figure 108 is rationally related to another highly significant figure in the gospels, namely, as already pointed out supra: 1224. The numerical value of tathâgatas was 816, which is exactly 2/3 of 1224. There were 12 disciples, and there were also 72 disciples. When we multiply 108 x 12, we get 1296, and when we subtract 72 - the 72 who “came back” - from 1296, we again arrive at 1224. The figure 72 is exactly 2/3 of 108, just as 816 is 2/3 of 1224.
We may go on: If we multiply 12 x 72 , we arrive at 864.
And 864 is also the number we arrive at when we multiply 108 x 8 = 864.
When we subtract 816, the numerical value of tathâgatas, from 864, the numerical value arrived at by multiplication of the number of the two groups of disciples - in both sources - we arrive at 864 minus 816 = 48.
And 48 is 4 x12.
And 108 is 9 x 12.
One of the noteworthy things about the figure 48 is, that like 816, 108 and 27, it is not one of the figures explicitly mentioned in the New Testament.
But below the surface they are most certainly at work.
When we go back to 864 = 12 x 72 = 8 x 108, and then add 2 x 12 = 24, then we arrive at 888.
And 888 was, as will be recalled, the numerical value not only of ´Iêsous but also of tathâgatas (816) plus kâyam (72).
Now, kâyam, as said, means “body” (here in the accusative). In Sanskrit it is often used in the sense of “a body of people” (as in jana-kâyah, or jana-kâyas ,where jana-, from janah/janas, means “people, folk”). The numerical value of kâyam is, as said, 72.
During the Last Supper , Tathâgatas, as well as Jesus, was surrounded by the body of his monks, or disciples. There were 12 of them, and 6x12 makes 72, which, as said, was also the number of disciples in another context.
This observation opens up for yet another interpretation of the phrase discussed above: Tathâgatasya kâyam, Mps 42:10. Now kâyam refers to the body of diciples, in Sanskrit as well as Greek. They form his body, his kâyam - be their number 12 or 72.

27 is exactly 1/4 of 108.
27 was also the number of syllables in Mt 25:7, which, as seen, formed the center in the body of the parable of the ten virgins, Mt 25: 12(13) : tote êgerthêsan pasai hai parthenoi ekeinai kai ekosmêsan tas lampadas heautôn - 27 syllables.
27 x 27 = 729, which was the number of Kêphas: 20+8+500+1+200 = 729. From the name of the first disciple we derive the cube that measures 9x9x9 = 729. Or rather: from the figure 729 we design a name that has precisely that numerical value, namely Kêphas.
3 x 27 = 81. If we read this figure as 801 (8+1 = 8+0+1), we get two symbols of the Christ, the ksatriyas, viz. the dove, peristera in Mt 3:16 = 80+5+100+10+200+300+5+100+1 = 801; and the A and the Ô, the Alpha and Omega = 1+800 = 801.

Let us now search for 4 x 27 = 108 within the body of the text of the New Testament!
Mt 16:16-20 is a crucial passage, the answer of Jesus to Simôn Petros. It consists of exactly 108 words (counting the kagô in 18 as two words).
It is partly based on a famous Buddhist passage of confession. Often repeated, it consists of exactly 108 syllables. (It is the formula of confession beginning with idam asmâkam...ending with devamanusyesu; it consists of two units, 58 + 50 syllables = 108; see e.g Waldschmidt´s edition of the Mps, p. 468, n. 3 for the Sanskrit. - Matthew is also fond of the figure 50 for individual units, as pointed out by Smit Sibinga.)

Let us then go to -
Mt 16:24-28. The passage as a whole consists of exactly 115 words, or 225 syllables. The initial 7 words, however, are evidently those of the redactor, not the ipsissima verba of Jesus. This means that the total number of words ascribed to Jesus is 115 minus 7, which leaves us with exactly 108 words.
This passage is essentially - namely for the words ascribed to Jesus in 16:24 - based on a celebrated Buddhist passage that forms a unit in its own right, and that consists of exactly 36 syllables = 1/3 of 108 syllables. Normally the 36 syllables are repeated 2,3 or 4 times in the unit as a whole:, giving us: 2 x 36 = 72; 3 x 36 = 108; 4 x 36 = 144 syllables. . (The Sanskrit formula of initiation begins with kesasmarsrv avatârya...ending with pravrajemeti, see e.g. Waldschmidt´s edition of the Catusparisatsûtra 19-20.)

Third, as already pointed out supra, the total number of words put into the mouth of Jesus, beginning with labete in Mt 26:26, ending with mou in Mt 26:29 is 54. The total number of syllables is 108 - the Buddhist number.
Needless to add: 2 x 27 = 54, and 4 x 27 = 2 x 54 = 108.
These examples, taken from three crucial passages in Matthew, are, together with the other examples of Gematria mentioned above, sufficient to prove that Matthew paid great attention to the figure 108 and its main divisors: 27, 36 and 54.
The reason for this is also clear: It is the usual reason:
Matthew wants to imitate his source as precisely as possible.
Those who were responsible for including the 27 books - neither less nor more - in the Body of the Tathâgatas - can hardly have been unaware of the deeper significance of the figure 27.

No wonder that he is identified as a “the toll collector”, hô telônês, Mt 10:3 - the main task of the toll collector being, needless to say, to count and to collect.

Conclusion

By means of a number of examples that could easily be increased, and that also will be increased, I have pointed out that the form and the deeper sense of crucial passages in the New Testament can only be properly understood in the light of the Sanskrit original of which even the title of the New Testament is an imitation.
The main key, or link, is provided by Gematria - the fact that letters also have numerical values, and that these numerical values, in the ultimate analysis, correspond, in a rational and verifiable fashion, to geometrical figures, circles, squares, cubes etc.

[04-04-2003] REVIEW by Christian Lindtner - first published in the Quarterly SUHRULLEKHA

The book is a sort of dialogue between a historian of religion (Michaels) and a New Testament scholar (Luz, known for his learned commentary on Matthew etc.). Their purpose is not apologetic, but rather “phenomenological”, they merely wish to compare and point out similarities and differences in the life and teaching of Jesus and Buddha. This, again, means that the book is primarily neither historical nor philological. The texts are taken more or less at their face value. And this makes a big difference.

The possibility of any historical relationship between Jesus and Buddha is rejected, not, unfortunately, by serious arguments of any sort , but merely by quoting Richard Garbe from 1914: “Die Ähnlichkeiten zwischen buddhistischen und neutestamentlichen Erzählungen haben einen Tummelplatz des Dilettantismus geschaffen, auf dem seit langer Zeit ein fröhliches Leben herrscht”. (“The similarities between Buddhist and New Testament stories have created a playground for dilettantism, on which a joyful life has unfolded itself for long.”)

This is partly true, but it is also partly wrong, and very much so. Both authors seem blind to the fact that much serious work has been done recently in the comparative field (see e.g. my review article of Derrett´s The Bible and the Buddhists, BSR 18/, pp. 229-242.) As if nothing had happened in the field of “Comparative Gospel Studies” since Garbe published his Indien und das Christentum in 1914!
The two authors are, of course, not the first to compare Jesus and Buddha. One of the many important titles missing in their bibliography is the beautifully produced book by J. Duncan M. Derrett, Two Masters. The Buddha and Jesus, published by Pilkington Press in 1995. Derrett concludes his comparative survey, intended especially for teachers of religious education and comparative religion, that, if mythology and conventional verbiage are stripped away, “the Two Masters are found teaching much the same”.

Any serious comparison between the life and teaching of Buddha and Jesus must start out by carefully comparing the original Greek and the Sanskrit. Philologia must be the ancilla comparationis! The authors neglect to do so, and the result is that their “phenomenological” approach is tantamount to a naive and superficial approach. The plain rejection of a philologically based comparison of parallels is nothing, frankly speaking, but phenomenological ignorance and arrogance.

Very naive is also the assumption that Jesus - and the same goes for the Buddha, for that matter - was a “historical person”. There is not one proof - not one - that Jesus was more historical than, say, Heracles or Apollo. The authors of the four canonical gospels are anonymous. Where is the proof that they provide serious and historically reliable testimony? There is none! That Matthew, Mark and Luke tell more or less the same story about Jesus proves nothing about their historical credibility. Why should they not have made it all up? Verbal similarities etc. prove beyond any doubt that they did not work independently. After all, does Paul not write: “But if through my falsehood God's truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?” (Romans 3:7). In order words: It is quite OK to lie about holy matters as long as the result is “a good story”. Theologians have always had problems with this crucial passage in Paul. It is typical Mahâyâna “skill in means” (upâya-kausalyam).

When we compare the Greek text of the gospels with the corresponding Sanskrit text, it soon becomes clear that the Greek is a translation assimilated to familiar Jewish notions and expectations. The number of examples in support of my contention is great and it grows every day.
Where a mere “phenomenological approach” sees differences, a less superficial approach sees little or no difference. In this brief review I shall confine myself to seven sets of such examples, corresponding to each of the seven angles from which the comparison between Jesus and Buddha is tackled by the two authors. All these examples have escaped the naive and superficial approach of our learned German colleagues.

I. The two founders. Jesus is called Son of God and Son of David etc. In both cases the original Sanskrit is deva-putra, “Son of Deva”, where deva becomes “god” or “David”. In Sanskrit the bodhi-sattva lives in a world of deva-putras, from which he descends. There are many deva-putras, which is also the case in Mt 5:9.

In Luke we find puns on bodhi-sattva, viz. Greek to paidi-on, “young boy”. The bodhi becomes paidi, and the to on translates San. sattva. Such puns, anything but serious, are typical of Buddhist scriptures, and they prove the Buddhist source.
Now and then Jesus is identified with John the Baptist. Apparently a strange identification! But not so when we see that ho bap-ti-tês is supposed to contain a pun on bo-dhi-sat-tvas. Here the bo-dhi becomes bap-ti, and the ho and tês “translates” sattvas. The Greek abstract suffix - tês, with ho, replaces the san. -tva(s).

Puns on tathâgata(s) are frequent, e.g. the synonym and homonym kathêgêtês, Mt 23:10; or the katheudete in Lk 22:46; or the tês diathêkês, Mt 26:28. The direct source is MPS 42:10. The New Testament, in other words, is simply Tathâgatasya kâyam. I first pointed this out at the Hesbjerg Seminar on New Testament Revisionism in 2001.
The Greek ho Khristos is an excellent rendering of San. ksatriyas. The genitive is ksatriyasya, which in Mt 1:1 becomes ´Iêsou Khristou. Excellent!

II. Jesus preaches the Kingdom of God, hê basileia tou theou.

So did the Buddha. There are several Sanskrit originals, one of which is deva-parisad. Here the deva- (= devasya or devânâm) correctly becomes tou theou, and the parisat becomes basileia. The learned Luz claims (p. 47) that basileia translates the Hebrew-Aramaic malkut - and thereby reveals his historical naivite. The truth is that basileia translates parisat and is assimilated to malkut, familiar to the Jews. The plural devânâm becomes ouranôn, in the Kingdom of the Heavens. It has always puzzled theologians why Mark and Luke prefer the phrase hê basileia tou theou as opposed to Matthew, who prefers hê basileia tôn ouranôn (see e.g. Paul Feine, Theologie des neuen Testaments, Berlin 1953, p. 69, with numerous references). The Sanskrit gives the simple answer: two different versions of deva-parisat (devasya or devânâm). The PaRiSaT becomes BaSiLeia Tou (p-r-s-t = b-s-l-t).

The odd ta tou theou in Mt 15:23, translates San. deva-tâ. The -tâ becomes Greek ta, and the deva- is taken as devasya = tou theou.

III. Ethics, love etc.
The Buddha did not teach love to the same extent that Jesus did so, it is often claimed.
One thereby overlooks the fact that Buddhists are expected to preach the Dharma sattvasattvahitâya etc.
Then we have the obscure word of Jesus about saying raka and môre, Mt 5:22 (quoted p. 81). One has to consult the source, the section on Pârâjika in the Prâtimoksa, to understand their sense: Behind the Greek eipê môre we find Sanskrit mrsâ-vâda etc. (see e.g. W. Pachow, A Comparative Study of the Prâtimoksa, Delhi 2000, pp. 71-75). The samgha is assimilated to the obscure synedrion, and the bhiksu of the original invariably becomes an adelphos. These are fine examples of what the Chinese called “ concept-matching” (ko-i). The stange Greek expression to de perisson, Mt 5:37, is a direct translation of the Sanskrit tata uttaram (to-de imitates ta-ta). It makes sense in the original (e.g. Georg von Simson (ed.), Prâtimoksasûtra der Sarvâstivâdins, Göttingen 2000, p. 184), but nok in Matthew. In Mt 5:40 the khitôna translates Sanskrit kathina; in 5:41, the one and the two “miles” reflect the tri-yojana of the Sanskrit original (von Simson, pp. 341 and 347 for the ref.), etc.

Interestingly, the Buddhists themselves had no claer idea of the historical background of kathina = khitôna, Latin tunica.

IV. Suffering, crucifixion.
The disciples of Jesus are asked to take their “cross”, Greek stavron - which is absurd. Imagine all his disciples running around as “crucifers”, or clad in crosses! The Buddha expects his disciples to put on vastrâni - which makes sense. So VaSTRaNi translates STaVRoN (v-s-t-r-n = s-t-v-r-n).

The crucifixion of Jesus is totally dependent on Buddhist sources. In the Mûlasarvâstivâdavinaya (ed. Gnoli, Roma 1977, pp. 21-26 ) one can read how the innocent Gautama was crucified on a sûla, and the details about the sculls, etc. are also there. Most of the remaining details about the two robbers, the supernatural phenomena etc. are to be found at the end of the Mahâparinirvânasûtra and the Saddharmapundarîkasûtra. One merely has to compare the Sanskrit and the Greek carefully. A phenomenological comparison based on mere translations is bound to lead to a scientific parinirvâna. There is hardly anything in the gospels that cannot be traced back to these Buddhist sources.

V. Christology. Here the title “Son of Man” is absolutely crucial. The double nature of Jesus - or Jesus and Christ - is as Buddhist as can be. A Tathâgata appears to be mortal, but is in fact immortal. This is the fundamental doctrine of the MPS,SDP etc. - and the fundamental doctrine of the NT.
The secrets of the term “Son of Man” I shall reveal on a later occasion. As a rule, the title that Jesus uses to refer to himself, simply translates the San. Tathâgata, that the Buddha employs in the same manner, i.e. in the third person singular.
According to the confused account of the gospels, Jesus was a devaputra born of a parthenos, of wind (ek pneumatos); he was the son of anthrôpos; as a babe he was in a phatne, manger, etc. According to our Buddhist sources, a bodhisattva (to paidi-on)comes from and even travels in a lotus, Sanskrit padma, padmini, pundarîka (playfully as if from pundar- plus i-ka). So a bodhisattva is the son of a pundar-. It is now easy to see that being born from (i.e. the son of) a parthenos is the same as being the son of anthrôpos, for p-r-th-n-s = n-th-r-p-s. The “from” is ek, and means that he is a son. And so it is clear that to be a son of man is the same as being born of a virgin, which again is the same as being born from (ek) or in a pundarîka- (p-n-d-r-k-s, as an adj.). To be born from pneumatos hagiou again leads us back to the lotus. The baby in the phat-ne is the bodhisattva in the pad-me etc. When Jesus travels “in wind”, pneumati (from padmini), the bodhisattva originally travelled through the air in a lotus.

So, not being aware of the Lotus, one cannot understand how Jesus was born.
The gospels surely confirm the lotus origin of the son of man!
The Greek ho huios tou anthrôpou is also an imitation/translation of the seven syllables of the term Saddharmapundarîka, i.e. the Tathâgata as a lotus of the true dharma etc.

VI. Prayer and meditation. This includes the Paternoster, the main sources of which are to be found in the Catusparisatsûtra, and the Mahâparinirvânasûtra. For instance, the mê...eis peirasmon, Mt 6:13, is a direct translation of the a-sam-pramosâya, MPS 10:10, where it makes perfect sense. The a- correctly becomes mê, and the sam-pramosâya correctly becomes eis peirasmon (s-m-p-r-m-s = s-p-r-s-m-n).

VII. The Church. The word ekklêsia only occurs twice in the Gospels. The opinio communis of theologians is (with a few exceptions) that the crucial passage, Mt 16:18, cannot possibly be an authentic word of Jesus.

But the rejection of this passage merely shows the subjectivity of theologians. It is as “authentic” - i.e. Buddhist - as any other passage.
A philologist familiar with the Sanskrit text of the SDP can easily point out the original passage (SDP, ed. Kern, p. 69) . The Lord reveals his secret to Sâri-putra(s), and this means that he has now again, for the second time, put in motion this (idam) supreme wheel (cakram) of the Dharma. Likewise, Jesus reveals his secret to Petros (p-t-r-s = p-t-r-s), and thereby he will build his ekklêsian (accusative). So, behind the six syllables of mou tên ekklêsian of Mt 16:18 we find the six syllables of idam dharma-cakram. Note the odd mou, which is explained by the desire to represent the idam of the original.

Sâri-putras, to be sure, is called Jina-putra, which explains the mysterious Bar-Jôna in Mt 16:17. Bar, “son”, translates putras, and Jôna is a homonym of Jina. The Sankrit âyuSMâN, of course. becomes SiMôN (s-m-n = s-m-n). It is, at the same time, a homonym and a synonym.
These examples - they could easily be multiplied almost ad infinitum - show how absurd and superficial it is to compare Jesus and Buddha, their life , their teachings, their disciples etc. etc. - without first comparing the original Sanskrit and Greek. (In the beginning was the word, if I may be forgiven for saying so!)

The authors have, arrogantly, failed to do so. No wonder therefore, that the result is rather similar to a gandharvanagara, so to speak. Or, with Nâgârjuna, one may compare their dialogue with one taking place between a teacher, who, by way of magic, creates a magical form, and this magical form forms again another magical form...

And so, a less superficial book would prefer the title: Buddha als Jesus, or “Jesus” oder Buddha - preferably adding a ?. Most of the apparent differences, turn out, in the eyes of a philologist, to be merely “phenomenological”.

Most readers will probably - as experience shows - have problems with accepting all these puns. But such puns were extremely common not only in the Indian sources but also in the ancient Jewish scriptures, OT etc. The New Testament gospels were “translated” into Greek from the Sanskrit exactly as one would have expected. First one, therefore, has to compare the translation against the original, and only then can one compare how and why the translation differs from the original.

These are just a few examples among many. More will be found in my book Hemligheten om Kristus, and in my paper “Gematria in the Gospels” soon to appear in Acta Orientalia.

[01-11-2001] A Report On The First International Seminar On New Testament Revisionism

Dr. Christian Lindtner and NEW TESTAMENT REVISIONISM

With the participation of Danish, German, Polish and Italian scholars of ancient Greek and/or Sanskrit, The First International Seminar on the recently discovered Buddhist sources of the New Testament Gospels was held at Hesbjerg Castle, near Odense, Denmark, on October 26-27, 2001.
The main purpose of the seminar - the first ever of its kind - was to present and discuss the newly discovered Buddhist Sanskrit sources of the celebrated Passion Narrative, as found in the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 26-28, with the parallel accounts in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and John.
Many professors of the New Testament were invited, but as a rule they declined the invitation , usually on the ground “that they did not know Sanskrit”.

Background

For more than a century, i.e. ever since the Buddhist scriptures first became available in Europe in the 19th century,, scholars have discussed the possibility of the New Testament being to a smaller or lesser degree dependent upon Buddhist sources. Opinions have differed widely. Some scholars have been prepared to admit a large degree of Buddhist influence in the Gospels, others have denied any historical influence at all. Some have taken an intermediate stand.
In a recent book, The Bible and the Buddhists, the British Sanskritist and theologian, John Duncan M. Derrett (born 1922) has drawn attention to many parallels between the New Testament and Buddhist classics. Buddhist missions were long senior to the first Christian missionaries, who could learn techniques from the former. Entrepreneurs in the same line of business, working in the same fields, Derrett argues, they examined each other’s stock, and “put their heads together”.
Accordingly, Derrett points out eleven cases where the New Testament may have gained from Buddhist models. In almost twenty cases we may assume that Buddhists have adopted New Testament material. In many cases the literatures may have gained reciprocally, or it may be impossible to claim that either influenced the other.
Several other books published in recent decades, including E.R. Gruber and H. Kersten, The Original Jesus, Shaftesbury, Dorset 1995 and Zacharias Thundy, Buddha and Christ, Leiden 1993, also advance numerous arguments in support of the thesis that the New Testament has borrowed from Buddhist or other ancient Indian sources. The numerous parallels of ideas or motives “set up a case to be answered” as Derrett correctly observes (p. 17), and his book is the most recent - and the most serious and scholarly - attempt to answer it.
The first scholar to point out not mere parallels of ideas and motives but direct loans in terms of words and phrases was the Danish Sanskritist and Classical philologist, Christian Lindtner (born 1949). His comparative work on the Greek and Sanskrit sources was done on a much broader textual basis than attempted by any previous scholars, including the ones mentioned above.
Many years of careful textual study finally, in 1998, lead him to the conclusion that the New Testament Gospels were “artificial or funny translations done, by unknown authors, directly from the Sanskrit into Greek”.
His views were first presented to the public in the introduction to two volumes of Indian Buddhist texts translated into Danish directly from Sanskrit, Pâli, Tibetan and Chinese. These two volumes appeared in September 1998, and soon raised a storm of controversy in Denmark. No less than 23 Danish scholars demanded from the publisher, Spektrum of Copenhagen, that the two volumes be withdrawn from circulation, and burned. The international response to the books of Lindtner, however, was very positive and favourable. Several reviewers found the thesis of Lindtner highly interesting and probable, and even recommended that his books be translated into German and English. Since these reviewers included some of the most distinguished Sanskritists and Buddhologists in the world, the open opposition in Denmark, where none of Lindtner´s opponents knew Sanskrit, soon became silent.
On November 7th 1998, Lindtner, as a guest of the Indian government, presented his thesis about the New Testament Gospels as being “Judaized Buddhism” to a huge international audience in India. The thesis was, more precisely, announced in the form of the inaugural speech on “Future World Order”, at the Bauddha Mahotsav, in Sarnath - at the very place where the Buddha, long ago, had first delivered his celebrated Sermon of Benares- the so-called Dharmacakrapravartanam. His inaugural speech was published, in an expanded form, as an article with the title Buddhism in Relation to Science and World Religions. It was published by Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust, Buddhanagar, Tukaram Gate, North Lallaguda, Secunderabad - 500 017. A.P. India.
In Denmark, as said, the opposition to the novel thesis that the Gospels were “artificial and funny translations done directly from the Sanskrit into Greek”, met with violent opposition. Not one single counter-argument, however, was provided. Since none of the opponents knew Sanskrit, and therefore could not meet him on scholarly grounds or in an open debate, the opponents resorted to calumny. The Danish Council of Research which had for many years supported the Sanskrit studies of Lindtner, was forced to discontinue its financial support. Publishers were put under pressure so as not to print the books on the Buddhist sources of the New Testament prepared by Lindtner.
There was even an international pressure. Because of his revisionist views, Lindtner was, for instance, denied participation in The XIIth. Conference of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, held at Lausanne, August 23-28, 1999. A registered letter, dated February 1, 1999, read:

“Dr. Lindtner, Taking into account serious problems and reservations connected with your planned participation in the forthcoming congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (Aug. 23-28, 1999, Lausanne), the Congress Organizing Committee, with the support of the Board of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, has decided that your presence at the congress is unacceptable. Please note that you will not be allowed to register for this congress or participate in it in any way.”

The letter was signed by a certain Tom J.F. Tillemans, President of the Congress Organizing Committee, and Vice-dean of the Faculty of Letters, and by Oskar v. Hinüber, a German Professor, and General Secretary of the International Association of Buddhist Studies.
The latter subsequently confessed to a German colleague that he had been put under pressure to give his signature, and that Lindtner would have been arrested by Swiss police had he appeared at the conference. Many scholars learning about all this protested privately about the unprecedented decision. Copies of the letter were sent to various individuals, including Prof. Colette Caillat, Paris, President of the International Association of Buddhist Studies.
She, too, accepted the exclusion of Lindtner without any protest. Lindtner, then, was not to be found among the two hundred scholars from various countries who read their papers at the Lausanne conference in August 1999. There were also attempts to exclude Lindtner from using public libraries, and he was, of course, excluded from presenting his discoveries in any of the Danish universities.
The conclusion, therefore, is clear: The public, who pays for such conferences, and for the running of the universities, cannot expect purely scientific interests to be served well by such unreliable bodies. In certain fields of research political, or religious correctness, counts much more than scientific or scholarly correctness.
Eventually, Lindtner´s work found supporters in and outside Denmark, men and women who cared and were concerned about the freedom of research and speech. Thus he could continue his research into the Sanskrit sources of the New Testament Gospels.

The Hesbjerg Seminar

The host of this seminar was the liberal theologian and the owner of Hesbjerg Castle near Odense, Jørgen Laursen Vig. As opposed to virtually all other Danish theologians and historians of religion who had been informed and invited to participate, Laursen Vig found no objections to comparative Christian-Buddhist studies on a historical and philological basis.
Thus it proved feasible, in spite of great odds, to assemble a body of Danish and other scholars most of whom knew Sanskrit and/or Greek.
The first presentation was by Professor Bangert, from Germany. He spoke about the translations of Buddhist texts into German by Karl Eugen Neumann, born in 1865. Neumann, who had studied with great scholars such as Weber, Oldenberg and Deussen, had, in the notes to his translations, pointed out many New Testament parallels to Buddhist texts. It was, however, not all that clear whether these parallels were valid. many seemed spurious. Nevertheless the work of Neumann should not be ignored, as more recent scholars have tended to do. Clearly, Neumann lacked some clearly articulated principles to guide him when comparing the parallels and deciding upon their historical relationship.
The main purpose of the seminar was, as said, simply to provide Lindtner with the opportunity to present to the public the Sanskrit sources of the Greek text of the Passion Narrative as found in the two final chapters of Matthew’s Gospel.
Lindtner pointed out how virtually each word and sentence found in the Greek text could be traced back to two independent texts belonging to the same corpus of Buddhist scripture, namely the Mûlasarvâstivinaya. One text provides the legend of Gautama, the eponymous progenitor of Gautama the Buddha. The other text is the Mahâparinirvânasûtra, first edited in Sanskrit, Pâli, Tibetan with a translation from the Chinese, by the late German scholar Ernst Waldschmidt.
It could then be shown how “Matthew” first had cut these two sources to little pieces and then pasted them together anew. In this way he had preserved nearly all the original words but created a new whole, a collage, a mosaic. The result therefore, was purely fictitious. “Matthew” displays a most artificial way of “translating” - a fact that has lead to much confusion. Sometimes he translated the sense of the words or sentences, sometimes he translated the sound of words and sentences, and sometimes he tried to combine the sound and sense of the original Sanskrit in the Greek. Nearly all the motives had been taken over from the two Sanskrit sources - e.g. the crucifixion and the Eucharist - but combined anew.
Lindtner also pointed out how the names of the four evangelists could be traced back to the original Sanskrit. For instance, the evangelist Mark is in Greek called Markos. The Sanskrit word is Kumâras, a name for the Buddha as a child. As can easily be seen, the consonants are the same in both languages, namely m-r-k-s. Each of these four consonants has a given numerical value, in this case 40+100+20+200. The numerical value, of course, remains the same, even if the original order of the individual consonants is changed. This rule is technically known as gematria, and gematria was extremely common in ancient Hebrew writings. Gematria also allows the use of anagramas, of course. And thus it can easily bee seen that San. Kumâras has the same value as Greek Markos, namely 360. Hence it is formally perfectly correct to “translate” Sanskrit Kumâras by Greek Markos.
Such examples are extremely numerous, providing us with cumulative evidence to establish the direct historical relationship. For instance, the first disciple of the Buddha is called Putras. In Greek this person becomes the first disciple of “Jesus”, namely Petros. Here, as often, not only are the original consonants retained, but their original order is likewise retained. Nearly all personal names and names of places in the Gospels can be accounted for in this way. Many such examples were provided during Lindtner´s presentation.
As know, Hebrew writing only indicated the consonants. The reader must know the vowels by himself. Thus, for example, p-t-r can be read as Peter or as pater, depending on the reader himself. Playing anagram one may also read p-t-r as pirate. So, if only the same consonants as in Sanskrit were to be found in Greek, the “translation” was considered “faithful” to the original. Since each letter also has a specific numerical value, the evangelists also paid careful attention to the number of consonants and syllables of the original Sanskrit. This means that if a sentence in the original has e.g. 42 syllables, then the corresponding Greek also has 42 syllables.
Lindtner also called attention to a few hidden puns, i.e. cases where the Sanskrit has the same sound but not the same sense as a Hebrew word understood but not explicitly mentioned in the Greek text of the gospels. Such instances serve to illustrate the extremely artificial nature of the gospels.
Some of these numerical techniques are not quite unknown to traditional theologians. It must be recalled that since each letter also has a certain numerical value, a firm distinction between sounds and numbers cannot always be made. For instance, the Gospel of John 1:19-2:11 deals mainly with Christ. It has a size of exactly 1550 syllables. The Greek for the Christ is ho Khristos. The numerical value of ho Khristos, counting also the vowels, is 70+600+100+10+200+300+70+200 = 1550.Such examples of numerical literary techniques are so frequent that they cannot possibly be considered a matter of mere chance. They are deliberate, and their manifest presence proves beyond any doubt that the evangelists most carefully counted consonants and syllables.
The Buddha is often called Tathâgatas, or the (only) teacher. In Matthew 23:10, Jesus is called kathêgêtês, or the (only) teacher. The two words are thus not only synonyms, they have the same meaning; they are also homonyms, they have the same number of syllables and nearly the same consonants. In Matthew 26:28, the San. Tathâgatas, in the genitive case Tathâgatasya, suddenly is translated by Greek tês diathêkês, meaning “of the covenant”. Here the sound and the number of syllables is retained nicely, but the sense is violently distorted.
The full Sanskrit phrase says: Tathâgatasya kâyam, the body (kâyam)of the Buddha. This in Matthew becomes “the blood of the covenant”. Luke 22:20 has a different version of the same Sanskrit phrase, namely “The New Testament”, Greek hê kainê diathêkê. Here Greek kainê translates Sanskrit kâyam. Here, to be sure, one must know that m and n are both nasals and thus numerically equivalent. Also San. y is a semivowel having the same value as Greek i. Thus kâyam = kainê.
Thus the “real” or hidden meaning of “The New Testament” is “The body of the Buddha”.
Such “translations” surely strike us as funny or artificial. Perhaps we can hardly believe that the evangelists translated from the Sanskrit into Greek in this irresponsible and unserious fashion.
But the fact is that such funny and artificial translations were quite common not only among the ancient Jews but also among the Indian Buddhists. So seen in a historical perspective, the four Gospels have been “translated” according to the rules common in those days. Good parallels to this curious way of “translating” can still be found among the remaining fragments of the Greek version (Septuaginta) of the Hebrew Bible done by Aquila who lived during the reign of emperor Hadrian (117-138). Aquila aimed to be faitful to the syllables and the letters of the Hebrew even if the Greek translation became meaningless. For instance, making use of homophony, he rendered the Hebrew ´elôn, meaning “holm oak” by the Greek aulôn, meaning “hollow, ditch, gully”. Aquila´s “translation” was very much in favour with the rabbis! One must, in other words, know the original in order not to misunderstand the translation. (For more such examples, see N.F. Marcos, The Septuagint in Context. Introduction to the Greek Versions of the Bible, Leiden 2000, pp. 115-118.)
Lindtner also pointed out that the strange procedure of combining different words and phrases from different sources was even to be seen in the way the gospels combined various Old Testament passages into a new whole. Later on, authors such as Tatian would combine passages from the gospels in the same way. A few words taken from e.g. Matthew would be combined with words taken from Luke etc. The result would be a “funny or artificial translation”, entirely fictitious in the literal sense of that term.
Nor does it come as a surprise that the Gospels are anonymous. We only know the first names of the authors. It is the same with the Buddhist scriptures.
At the seminar several participants expressed their curiosity about the motive for making such funny translations. And in what kind of historical milieu could such translations have originated?
For scholars familiar with Buddhist sources the answer to such questions is not difficult.
In Mahâyâna there is a very important concept called “skill in means” (upâya-kausalya). According to this principle the Buddhist missionary is allowed to avail himself of any means with the single purpose of “presenting the body of the Buddha” to even the most ignorant people - yes, even to animals and demons. From the point of view of Mahâyâna it is considered very meritorious to mention the word Tathâgata, or to make an image of Tathâgata. The idea is that common ignorant people will not be able to understand the philosophical principles of Buddhism. For them it is enough to have faith in Tathâgata. It is therefore, quite irrelevant whether the New Testament makes any sense at all. Paradoxes are welcome as long as one hears the word of Tathâgata. The important thing is that people believe, even in a purely fictitious Buddha or Bodhisattva - such as “Jesus”. Some of the Buddhist scriptures used by the evangelists claim that one can become liberated merely by mentioning the name or by “seeing” the body of one of the many purely fictitious Buddhas in which many Buddhists believe.
This fact not only accounts for the many puns on Buddhist names in the gospels but also, as said, for the very title: The New Testament - The Body of the Buddha (to those knowing the pun).
The celebrated idea of the secret of the Messiah could also be traced directly back to the Buddhist sources. This puzzle has remained a puzzle to theologians to this day - exactly as it was intended to.
History shows that the Buddhist missionaries were highly successful.
Thus the New Testament Gospels can be characterized as crypto- Buddhism, or, since its authors and audience were undoubtedly Jews, “Judaized Buddhism”.

Challenges

At the seminar, where many other similar translations were presented and discussed, Lindtner came up with two challenges, one to theologians in general, and one to Christian priest in general.
The challenge to the theologians is that the Gospels, and other writings in the New Testament, cannot be properly understood without knowledge of the original Sanskrit sources. Theologians who ignore the Sanskrit sources, cannot be considered critical of their sources. They are, in other words, not real historians.
As for the Christian priests, at least the Lutheran ones, they have given the oath to preach the Gospels as they truly are without falsification of any kind. Since the Greek texts, taken at their face value, present a false, untrue and highly misleading picture of the original sense - as shown by some of the examples given above - this means, that the priests, if they want to be considered honest, must present the Gospels in the light of the Sanskrit originals. Modern translations, always based on the Greek, are, of course, even more unreliable than the Greek. Otherwise, if the ignore the Sanskrit, they break their oath.
The term “revisionism” may be taken to mean to revise the sources. In this sense, when speaking of the text of the New Testament, the time has come to revise the Greek in the light of the Sanskrit. No serious historian would base his views about past events on the basis of a highly misleading “artificial and funny translation” of the original. One would think that this goes without saying. And yet this is what theologians, priest and common Christians have been doing for about two millennia.
Lindtner concluded by saying that he had asked several theologians for one proof - just one proof - serving to demonstrate that the New Testament gospels must be considered serious scriptures. It is not enough merely to state that they are “the word of God”. A mere statement proves nothing. If it did, the opposite statement would also be true. But both statements cannot possibly be true at the same time - at least not without violating a fundamental principle of logic (the law of contradiction).
If nearly all the words, all the sentences, all the ideas found in the Passion Narrative can be traced back to Buddhists sources still available in the Sanskrit language, how, then, can one seriously claim that the gospels are “the word of God”!
To this day no theologian had been able to provided Lindtner with that proof.

THE POPE IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE BUDDHA

The journey to the Holy Land that Pope Paul John II undertook March 2000 was not merely an ordinary journey. Widely publicized as nothing less than a pilgrimage in the footsteps of Jesus, the itinerary first brought Saint Peter's successor No. 264 to Bethlehem, thus providing a world-wide audience with an opportunity to observe His Holiness genuflecting in the Church of the Nativity, where it is believed that Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ. After a stay in Jerusalem, includingh a visit to the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, His (so-called) Holiness continued to Galilee, to the mountain, or rather hill, where Jesus is said (by Matthew only) to have delivered the celebrated Sermon on the Mount. On Saturday, March 25th, the Polish Pope visited Nazareth, the village in which Jesus, according to our only source, the New Testament Gospels, is supposed to have grown up to manhood. The by now eighty year old Pope concluded his pilgrimage in Jerusalem, in the outskirts of which Jesus ended his life on earth - at least for the time being.

One of the many things that must puzzle a critical reader of the four Gospels is the curious and almost systematical vagueness and uncertainty with regard to chronological and topographical indications. Some researchers are convinced that the story about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem is nothing more than a myth. Where and even whether Jesus actually delivered his Sermon on the Mount, is also open to doubt. Mark does not even mention it, and Luke locates it in a different form to a level place. And where the old Nazareth - or Nazara, another reading - actually was situated, we do not really know. Moreover, it is doubtful whether it was not Capernaum, rather than Nazareth, that was the paternal town of Jesus and the center of his activities. But even here there are doubts. According to Matthew 4:13, Capernaum was beside the ocean, not, as most translators have it, manipulating the Greek original, by the lake. And when we finally reach Golgotha, the exact location is also unknown. There is no convincing archaeological evidence either for the traditional site at the present Church of the Holy Sepulcher or for the more recently supposed site of Gordon's Calvary.

Similar uncertainty adheres to vitually all other topographical indications concerning the itineray of Jesus in the Gospels.
One of the other facts that must arouse our curiosity is the striking coincidence, compared with the NW Gospels, that the Buddhist Gospels exhibit with regard to the locations with which the Buddha is associated.

In Buddhism there are four major places of pilgrimage, that a pious follower is expected to visit.
First there is Lumbinî, the site where queen Mâyâ gave birth to the Bodhisattva (i.e.the Buddha before he woke up as Buddha), exactly as the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem. Now Lumbinî is a historical place, it was re-discovered in 1895, and a few years ago excavations brought to light a slab from the time of king Asoka, showing the exact location. Mâyâ, according to the Buddhist sources, was also a "virgin", dârikâ - but this was, naturally, before she was married to the king, the father of the bodhisattva. Hence, we may already here assume, the unnatural confusion about pathenogenesis in the Gospels.

Lumbinî is situated in south Nepal, not far from the paternal town of the Buddha, Kapilavastu. In later Christian art one finds images of Mary and Jesus that impress us as mere copies of queen Mâyâ giving birth to the bodhisattva. Kapila-vastu was the center for the missionary activity of the Buddha, exactly as Caper-naum, Jesus' "own" town, was so for the alleged son of the Mary, now, finally, no longer Virgin. When the Buddha visited Kapilavastu, he would normally stay outside the city, in a park called Nyagrodha. Capernaum and Nazareth play exactly the same role in the life of Jesus , as do Kapilavastu and Nyagrodha in the life of the Buddha. Hence, we suspect, the duplicity in the Gospels.

The second place of pilgrimage in Buddhism, is Bodh(a) Gayâ, the place where the bodhisattva woke up to Enlightenment (bodhi) as Buddha, enlightened. Apparently nothing similar is related about Jesus. But only apparently. For if one looks closer at the text on the foundation of Buddhism, the Catusparisatsûtra (translated into Danish in Hînayâna. Den tidlige indiske buddhisme, Copenhagen 1998, pp. 18-59), one can hardly fail to notice that the second major event in the life (or legend) of the Buddha has been cut into several pieces and combined anew in the NT Gospels. In the account of the baptism of Jesus, in the account of his thanksgiving (Matthew 11:25-30), and in that of the Transfiguration on a unknown mountain (Matthew 17:1-13), the attentive reader can hardly fail to find partly literal translations of the Buddhist original, in Sanskrit. Curious, indeed! Should the reader wish to identify for himself the exact original location of the unknown mountain where Jesus is said to have met Moses and Elijah, let him turn to pages 22-26 of my Danish translation, from which he will also be informed about the original identity of Peter, of James and of John - not to speak of the bright cloud and the three huts that the (for now obvious reasons) confused Peter offers to put up. That the Gospels thus cut the original to pieces and rearrange the fragments into a new virtual reality, reflects the very same procedure they also apply to passages from the Old Testament. That the Gospels occasionally combine different OT passages into a new and, therefore, fictitious whole, is well known to all theologians. The result is a sort of mosaic, or collage. It has nothing to do with true history.

The third major place of pilgrimage in Buddhism is the Deer park outside Benares. Here in the park at modern Sarnath, the Buddha delivered his first great sermon, exactly as Jesus, according to Matthew, delivered his Sermon on the Mount. Both spoke of "justice" (Sanskrit dharma, Greek nomos and dikaiosynê). People from five areas and the (five) disciples listened to Jesus, exactly as a group of five disciples listened to the Buddha. Jesus speaks of eight beatitudes, the Buddha of the eight-fold Aryan Path. The Greek word for blessed, we now see, translates the Sanskrit sukha, happy.(Two Sanskrit verses give the eight beatitudes.) There is hardly a term or a phrase in the Gosples that a philologist cannot trace back to what, therefore, must be the Buddhist original. The uncertainty about the location of the Sermon on the unknown mountain or level place in the Gospels thus seems to suggest that the first great sermon of Jesus historically speaking was delivered elsewhere, namely outside Benares.

The fourth place of pilgrimage in Buddhism, is Kusinagarî, the place where the Buddha dies. Close to Kusinagarî we find Ku-kus-tâ. Here, the Buddha was twice offered something to drink. At first he declined the offer - the water being turbid - the second time he accepted the offer - the water now being pure. Twice Jesus is offered something to drink. First he rejects, then he accepts. The unknown locality of Gol-go-tha in several other respects also reminds the reader of Ku-kus-tâ (also spelled Kukutthâ). The Buddhist sources also explain why this place came to be associated with skulls - the Calvary - and they even provide further fascinating details of the alleged Crucifixion! The Buddha and Jesus pass away at exactly the same time between twelve and three, with the only difference that the Buddha dies at night, Jesus in the time of the day. The Buddha dies having passed into the ninth stage of meditation. When Jesus died it is said to have been dark all over the country. For this no darkness no natural explanation can be offered. The simple explanation is, of course, that the Gospels simply copied the Buddhist original, only turning night into day. Hence the paradox of the day being dark.

This correctness of this simple historical explanation is corroborated by the events that follow. The description of the burial and resurrection of Jesus can be found almost verbatim in the Buddhist Gospel. Moreover, Paul (1. Corinthians 15:6) wrote about the more than five hundred brothers to whom Jesus appeared. To this day we have had no idea about the identity of these five hundred brothers. The Buddhist text, however, speaks of five hundred monks present at the cremation of the body of the Buddha. They witnessed the body of the Lord go up to heaven - in smoke! The Sanskrit term is brahma-loka, i.e. the world (loka) of Brahma - becoming the kingdom of God (brahma) in the Gospels. So here again the Buddhist original provides the simple and natural explanation of what in the Gospel has become a puzzle.

The Buddhist texts to which I have here referred, have, for the major part, only become available to scholars after World War II. On the basis of often fragmentary Sanskrit manuscripts found in Turfan, some of them were edited by the German philologist, Ernst Waldschmidt in the fifties and sixties. Most of them still exist in old Chinese and Tibetan translations, and in various Central Asian languages. There is, therefore, really nothing surprising in the fact that they should also have fallen into the hands of the unknown authors of the New Testament Gospels. Obviously these unknown men must have been Jews familiar as they are with the OT. Any modern history of Jewish literature in the Hellenistic period that here concers us, provides evidence to the effect that Jewish authors for the purpose of religious propaganda produced numerous literary forgeries. The NT Gospels seem to fall into this category.

A dictionary to the Sanskrit texts is being published by the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen as Sanskrit Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden. Here the reader can easily find further references to some of the original sources.

But there are many more surprises in store for those prepared to delve into the original Buddhist sources in the Sanskrit language! It is not merely the four Buddhist places of pilgrimage that have left manifest traces in the New Testament Gosples.
A similar observation applies to nearly all persons and minor localities mentioned in the Gospels.
Nearly all the twelve disciples, or apostles, of Jesus may be tracked down in the Buddhist sources, not only for their names but also for their activities. The first of the apostles of Jesus is, of course, Simon Peter (Gr. Petros), or St Peter. The first among those of the Buddha is Sâri Putras. Usually Jesus is held to have coined the name Petros himself (allegedly "translating" the Aramaic Kephas, a rock). However, what the Gospels report about St Peter is time and again taken over directly from the Buddhist Gospel. So, there can hardly be any doubt that Petros translates Putras. Hence, Simon Peter is merely the ghost of Sâri Putras. The principle according to which "Jesus" acted in the role of a translator is immediately obvious: All the consonants of the original are preserved without change: p-t-r-s. (Semitic languages, as a rule, do not indicate the vowels, only the consonants!) Simon, as opposed, to Sâri, is a good Jewish name. Thus, the Simon "called" Peter, or even "called" Kêphas, was only called so, ae the Gospels themself disarmingly admit. Originally, we are speaking of Sâri Putras, the first among the disciples of the Buddha (the genuine as well as the impostor).

Among the women in the life of the Buddha, Amrapâli, the courtesan (ganikâ) of Vaisalî, plays almost exactly the same role as does the "sinner" Mary Magdalene in the life of Jesus. In the later Christian legend (Jacobus de Voragine), this Mary is reported to have been buried in the Vezelay monastery, in Burgundy - an unmistakable echo of the monastery that Amrapâli of Vaisalî long ago presented to the Buddha and his monks.

One also recalls the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, in the house of an otherwise unknown Simon the leper. She is said to come with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure (Indian) nard. If one compares the Greek text of Luke 7:37 with the original Sanskrit, one cannot, as in the case of the name of Petros, fail to see that not only the sense but also all the original consonants of Amrapâli-ganikâ have been preserved without change by Luke (and, in part, by Matthew and Mark). The two rare Greek adjectives describing the nard are only fully understandable once it is recognized that they translate Sanskrit sucinâ pranîtena. The Greek even omits "and", exactly as does the original Sanskrit (asyndeton), thus again showing the direct literary dependence. Here is the transcribed Greek text of Luke 7:37 so that even a reader ignorant of Greek and Sanskrit can identify Amra-pâli-ganikâ for himself by way of the consonants: kai idou gynê êtis ên en tê polei hamartolos. Since the Greek means, " And behold, a woman who was in the city a sinner", the original sense of the Sanskrit is also served well. The pun is on the sound and on the sense, as well as on the original pattern of the sentence.
There are at least eight other puns on the name of the Buddhiust sinner in the Gospels. I shall, however, not deprive the reader the joy of discovering these puns for himself!

According to the same principle of keeping the consonants, it is now also easy to see why the Buddhist Nalanda becomes the mysterious Christian Nathanael, why Markata becomes Martha, why Pippalas becomes Philippos (Philip), why Aniruddhas becomes Andreas (Andrew), etc. etc. The principle of consonant preservation has here been successfully at work. This was also so when Lumbinî, Kapilavastu and Nyagrodha were transformed into Bethlehem, Capernaum (Gr. Kapharnaoum) and Nazareth, or Nazara. To estimate how successful the three last identifications actually were, one must keep in mind that the vivid imagination of the evangelists here was confined within certain limits: They had to assimilate the original names to locations already known to their readers. They could not possibly associate their Jesus with places that no one had ever heard of before without thereby spilling their beans. The closest they could get to Lumbinî, Kapilavastu and Nyagrodha, as we can see by consulting an atlas of the Bible, would therefore be Bethlehem, Kapharnaoum and Nazareth/Nazara, respectively. In the case of Kusinagarî, which simply had to become Jerusalem, there was no real escape; but the identification of Kukustâ with a purely imaginary Golgotha situated close to Jerusalem, merely ad hoc, contributed to a partial illusion of the identity of Kusinagarî and Jerusalem. Coming back to the famous Buddhist courtesan, Amrapâli-ganikâ:

Since nearly everything else that is reported in the Gospels about this woman can be traced back to the Sanskrit, there can remain no further doubt about the original Buddhist source of Mary Magdalene. She, too, like Simon Peter, is but a Buddhist in Christian disguise. One among the many enigmatic locations in the Gospels, is Magadan, only mentioned by Matthew 15:39. Speculatively, theologians have suggested that this may be an error for Magdala, and, going on with their speculations, they have imagined that this was the place from where Mary Magdalene must have come.

But in the light of the Buddhist sources the old crux of Magadan finally finds its natural solution. The ghost land of Magadan was originally the land of Magadha, in India, from where the Buddha set out on his last journey to Kusinagarî. On his way he met Amrapâli-ganikâ. Later, the evangelists transformed her into Mary Magdalene, just as Kusinagarî was translated into Jerusalem. Matthew retained the original Magadha almost unchanged,as Magadan, whereas Mark covered the original entirely up behind the equally obscure locality of Dalmanutha. Matthew says that Jesus got into a boat and went to the vicinity of Magadan. For obvious reasons he is silent about where the boat sailed.

It was originally the Buddha who here crossed the river Ganges. Mark adds that the disciples joined him in the boat. With this piece of additional information, Mark comes closer to the Buddhist original than does Matthew. The Buddhist text (the Mahâparinirvânasûtra) explicitly mentions that the monks also crossed the Ganges. The monks became disciples. Matthew and Mark, therefore, must have used the Buddhist original independently, here as often elsewhere.

I have here merely given a few examples of how the Buddhist texts in Sanskrit show that many of the places, events and persons that have for almost 2000 years naively and uncritically been associated with the life and teaching of Jesus, from a philological and historical point of view, must be said originally to have taken place in India, centuries "before Christ".
Much work still remains to be done, but there can be no doubt that the New Testaments Gospels must be seen as having been translated from the Sanskrit of the Buddhist Gospels.

And so, coming back to the Polish Pope, evidence permits us safely to conclude:
Had Pope Paul John II instead undertaken his pilgrimage to India and Nepal, from Lumbinî to Kapilavastu and Nyagrodha, to Bodh(a) Gayâ, to Magadha and to Kusinagarî and other famous Buddhist sites, then one could with a clear conscience maintain that the impostrous successor of St Peter - i.e. the false vicar of Sâri Putras - had followed in the footsteps of "Jesus" - alias Gautama the Buddha.

SOME SANSKRITISMS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT GOSPELS

When Dr. Kunjunni visited me here in Denmark in May 1999, we not only had the occasion to read and discuss the Sanskrit text of Bhavya´s Madhyamakahrdayam, but I also availed myself of the opportunity to share with my old friend some of the discoveries I had make in regard to the New Testament Gospels and their Sanskrit sources.

Dr. Raja immediately recognized that if merely one convincing example of the Greek text being based on the Sanskrit could be pointed out and convincingly accounted for in this light, then this would be sufficient to establish a historical relationship.

If more cases could be pointed out, where the Greek could be explained in the light of the Sanskrit, so much the better, of course.

Here I would like to draw the reader´s attention to some cases of “Sanskritisms”, where old and still unsolved difficulties in the Greek of the Gospels are convincingly solved once it is recognized that they are translated from the Sanskrit.

The main Buddhist source of the NT Gospels is the Mûlasarvâstvâda-vinaya (MSV), a huge collection of texts which also include the celebrated Catusparisatsutra (CPS) and the Mahâparinirvânasûtra (MPS). CPS and MPS were edited in Sanskrit and Tibetan by the German scholar Ernst Waldschmidt, Berlin 1952-1962 & 1950-1951, respectively. The CPS also forms a part of the Samghabhedavastu (SBV), the Sanskrit text of which (from Gilgit) was edited by Raniero Gnoli, Rome 1977-1978. Full references to these and other relevant sources may be found in the indispensable Sanskrit-Wörterbuch der buddhistischen Texte aus den Turfan-Funden, Göttingen 1973

-, and in my monograph Comparative Gospel Studies (forthcoming). My thesis is simply that there is not much in the NT Gospels that cannot be traced back to the MSV. The NT Gospels are translated - in a prima facie very strange fashion, to be sure - directly from the Sanskrit of the MSV. This novel thesis of mine was first presented to an international public in Sarnath, November 1998. My paper was subsequently expanded and published as a pamphlet by the Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust under the title Buddhism in Relation to Science and World Religions, Secunderabad 1999.

Currently I am preparing, inter alia, a running commentary on Matthew, pointing out, chapter by chapter, the Buddhist sources of the first of the four Gospels. For references to the Greek sources and modern commentaries on the Gospels etc., I shall have to refer the interested readers to that book. Here, I shall have to assume my reader to be familiar with the Greek and Sanskrit texts, and their philological problems. 1.

Matthew 17: 5. Jesus takes Peter et al. up on a high mountain, where a transfiguration takes place. Peter offers to set up three shelters (Gr. skênê). From the context one does not understand why Peter would want to set up such shelters. Candidly, Luke 9:33 admits that Peter did not know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a bright (Gr. nephelê phôteinê) cloud envelops them. The Buddhist source solving the problems is CPS 6. Bhagavat is staying with Mucilindas, the nâgarâja. Then a saptâhiko ´kâlameghah samupâgatah, CPS 6:2. To protect Bhagavat from the rain of the a-kâla-megha, lasting seven days, Mucilindas offers his hood (phana) as a shelter. Matthew, clearly, has inverted the order of events. Also, he has “mistranslated” a-kâla, which either means “out of season”, or “bright”. To make sense he should, as the CPS, first have mentioned the dark rain cloud, and then Peter´s offer to put up shelters (San. phana becoming Gr. skênê). He confuses his reader by translating a-kâla as “bright”, though the sense required here is “out of season”. All the other details are also in the Buddhist source: The seven days become six days in Matthew and Mark, about eight days in Luke. Muci-lindas inspires to Moses and Elias; the description of Jesus is based on that of the Buddha in CPS 10; Peter (Gr. Petros) etc. were originally Tripusa etc., CPS 2. (p-t-r-s/t-r-p-s, same numerical value and consonants). 2.

Mark 6:39-40. No satisfactory explanation for the two Greek expressions symposia symposia, “companies companies”, and prasiai prasiai, “groups groups”, has ever been offered. Both are translations of the frequent samghât samgham pûgât pûgam, “from group to group, from multitude to multitude”, which occurs in the same sense e.g. MPS 26:5. The Greek gives the original sense, and at the same time it attempts to reproduce the sounds and the order of the original Sanskrit. Since this is the only place where the four words occur as such in the Gospels, this also proves that “Mark” had direct and independent access to the Sanskrit original. 3.

Matthew 16:17. Again, no satisfactory explanation has been given why Simon Peter is called Bar-Iôna. Now, Simon Petros is, as a rule, no other than Sâri-Putras. Sâri-Putras is often addressed in Buddhist sources (Mahâyâna only?) as a jina-putras, “son of Jina”. Bar-Iôna means son (bar) of Iôna, and so it is easy to see that bar translates putras whereas Iôna imitates the sound of Jina(s). So Bar-Iôna was simply Sâri-Putras. Puns on the name of this important disciple - in both sources - are quite frequent. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says: sy ei Petros, “You are Peter”. The Gr. sy ei contains a pun on Sâri. The “missing r” can, according to a general rule, be taken from putras. In John 1:47 the noun Israelite, Gr. Israêlitês - the disciple in whom there is no guile - contains another pun on Sâri-putras. The word means “son of Israel”, which means that first the s-r represent the original two consonants of Sâri, whereas putras is represented by its original meaning in Israelite as a whole. By means of a simple pun, Sâri-Putras has become a son of Israel In the Gospels “Israelite” only occurs here. To be sure, the other disciples mentioned by John 1 can all be traced back to the Buddhist sources. As I point out in my forthcoming book, Aniruddhas thus becomes Andreas, Pippalas becomes Philippos, and Nâlandâ becomes Nathanael. The Gospels always try to retain the number and nature of the consonants (guttural, palatal, lingual, dental, labial, semivowel, sibilant) of the names of persons and places in the Sanskrit original. 4.

Matthew 14:34 & 15:39. Jesus, who has just been addressed as “son of God”, Gr. theou huios - which of course is a direct translation of San. deva-putras, as is the hybrid “son of David (Gr. huios Daueid)”- now “ and crossing over came to land Gennesaret”.

Here the Greek kai diaperasantes êlthon epi tên gên (eis) Gennêsaret is a direct rendering of San. (mâgadhakâ manusyâ) nadîm Gangâm uttaranty api pratyuttaranti, MPS 7:5. Some editors of the NT add an eis, “to”, to avoid the difficult reading gên Gennêsaret, “to land G.”. But wrongly so, for Gr. gên Gen- is an attempt to render the Gangâm of the original, retaining all the original consonants (viz. g-n-g-m=n). The San. uttaranty api has been inverted so as to become Gr. kai (=api) diaperasantes (= uttaranti), the sense being thus preserved. The second San. verb, pratyuttaranti, is represented by the five syllables, and consonants, of êlthon epi tên (NB:l counts as r, as often).

For San. mâgadhakâ, meaning “(men) form the land of Magadha” (cf. Tib.: yul ma ga dha´i mi rnams, “men of Magadha land”), we have to consult Matthew 15:39, which says that Jesus went into the boat and came “into the borders of Magadha”, Gr. eis to oria Magadan.

All modern commentators agree that this strange location “Magadan” is quite unknown from other sources. Equally puzzling is the variant given in Mark 8:10: “to the parts Dalmanutha”, Gr. eis ta merê Dalmanoutha. Neither “Magadan” nor “Dalmanu(o)tha” are to be found on the map.

In the light of the original source, MPS 7:5, all the old problems are now finally solved. One only has to look at a map of Buddhist India!

It was originally the Buddha who crossed the Ganges in the land of Magadha. This famous episode is not only known from MPS, but even from Buddhist art. The earliest artistic representation of this episode is already to be found in Sanchi, see Dieter Schlingloff, “Die wunderbare Überquerung der Gangâ”, in N. Balbir & J.K.Bautze (eds.), Festschrift Klaus Bruhn zur Vollendung des 65. Lebensjahres, Reinbek 1994, pp.571-584. To be sure, this proves the chronological priority of the Buddhist source.

MPS 7:5 also provides us with the clue to the mysterious location “Dalmanoutha”. Immediately after the words uttaranty api, the San. says that some of the Magadha people crossed the river (nadî) Gangâ in salmani-phalesu (Tib. sin sal ma la´i span leb, “boards of the salmani tree”), i.e. on rafts. Here there can hardly be any doubt that dalman imitates salman. In all likelihood, the Gr. outha is intended to imitate San. atha, the first word in the following sentence, MPS 7:6.

Speaking of atha, this common word is usually translated by Gr. eutheôs or euthus, in all the four Gospels. This literal translation creates confusion, because the Gr. words means “at once”, “immediately”, whereas San. atha simply means, “(and) then”. By translating Gr. eutheôs or euthus in the sense of San. atha the reader can suddenly make natural sense of virtually all the passages in the Gospels where atha occurs in Greek disguise.

A similar observation applies to Gr. apo tote in Matthew 4:17 and 16:21. Some scholars have suggested that this strange expression “from then on” may mark a turning point in the life of Jesus. The reader familiar with the style of SBV, however, will have no problems in recognizing the Gr. apo tote as an inverted translation of San. tato ´pi, “and then”. As a rule, Gr. tote likewise translates San. tato/tatah/tatas, a synonym of atha.

In other words: To understand the Greek one must know the Sanskrit behind it. This is a general rule that - so I maintain - applies to all the “Sanskritisms” of the four Gospels as a whole.

These are just a few typical examples of how the unknown authors of the Gospels “translated” the Sanskrit into Greek. The puns on the sounds of the original Sanskrit are sufficient to show that there was no “Aramaic” (or any other) intermediate.

The strange way of “translating” may come as a surprise to modern readers. But if things are seen in their proper historical context there is but little cause for surprise. Indian readers familiar with the norms of alamkârasâstra - the sabda- and the arthâlamkâras - will easily recognize the various kinds of puns on the sound and meaning of the original.

Jewish readers familiar with the rules (middoth) that are employed in the exegesis of their sacred scriptures, will have even less cause for surprise. A convenient survey of rabbinic hermenetics is provided by Hermann L. Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, New York 1959.

The Gospels, with odd results, have been translated “according to the book”. The main rules (Hebrew middoth) at work when the Sanskrit was translated into Greek, were: 1. Neged, corresponding significant number, as when the seven days of the original become six, six, and about eight. 2. Ma´al, paronomasia, a playing on words which sound alike, San. anuprâsa, alliteration, or yamaka, as in the case of Nâlandâ and Gangâm becoming Nathanael and gên Gên-. 3. Gematria, from Gr. grammateia, computation of the numeric value of letters, and metathesis of the letters, e.g. when putras and Tripusa(s) both become Petros. 4. Notarikon, when a word is broken into two or more, as when ganikâ becomes gynê ekh- or gynê êtis.

Gematria is often seen as a subdivision of Notarikon. 5. Mukdam shehu´meúhar ba-´inyan, when something that precedes is palaced second, hysteron proteron, as when the shelters are mentioned before the a-kâla-megha, though they should have been mentioned after the rainy cloud. These and many other middoth are extremely common in Haggadah litterature, i.e. in Hebrew stories of the Passover.

The common technical term for translation or interpretation is Targum. It may either be Peshat (literal), or a free haggadic translation with midrashic passages, or commentaries. The Gospels should thus be seen as a targum belonging to Haggadah, done according to the middoth current among learned Jews about two thousand years ago. Often, one cannot fail to suspect that ancient Hebrew hermeneutics were somehow indebted to Indian sources to a much higher extent than generally assumed. Not just in Greek but also in Hebrew there are many “Sanskritisms”. This interesting issue I hope to take up on another occasion.

Way back in 1882, in a letter on a topic of our present concern, reprinted in his celebrated book India - What Can it teach us?, London 1899, p. 284, Max Müller wrote: “ That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity cannot be denied, and it must likewise be admitted that Buddhism existed at least 400 years before Christianity. I go even further, and should feel extremely grateful if anybody would point out to me the historical channels through which Buddhism had influenced early Christianity. I have been looking for such channels all my life, but hitherto I have found none. What I have found is that for some of the most startling coincidences there are historical antecedents on both sides, and if we once know those antecedents, the coincidences become far less startling. If I do find in certain Buddhist works doctrines identically the same as in Christianity, so far from being frightened, I feel delighted, for surely truth is not the less true because it is believed by the majority of the human race.”

In the decades that followed there were numerous valuable contributions to the problem taken up by Max Müller. The most important and well-informed of these was probably Richard Garbe, Indien und das Christentum, Tübingen 1914. Eight years later, Dr. Hans Haas published a 45-page Bibliographie zur Frage nach den Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Buddhismus und Christentum, as an appendix to his rare and important book “Das Scherflein der Witwe” und seine Entsprechung im Tripitaka, Leipzig 1922.

Opinions were divided. In 1935, the Indologist M. Winternitz wrote that, “ the view must be rejected that Buddhist literature has exerted a direct influence upon the gospels” (quoted from Derrett, op. rec., p. 21). The Danish Indologist Poul Tuxen (1880-1955), among many others, while fully aware of the many parallels, expressed a similar conviction in his book Buddha. Hans Lære, dens Overlevering og dens Liv i Nutiden, Copenhagen 1928. According to Tuxen, the parallels, though striking, are not to explained as a result of any historical influence from Buddhism, which certainly would have the chronological priority, but rather as a result “of some typical features, spontaneously arising in a religious mind writing about a great personality” (p. 77). And thus the matter would seem to have been settled for good. What Tuxen means by these obscure remarks remains a puzzle, and, of course, he was unable to point out any set of scriptures describing some other great personality in similar words and details.

The last major work before WW II was H.W.Schomerus: Ist die Bibel von Indien abhängig?, München 1932 (omitted in Derrett´s Bibliography). Schomerus accepted many parallels but did not find it necessary to assume that the gospels were dependent on Indian or Buddhist sources. The recent decade, however, has witnessed an increasing interest, even a revival, of the old problem of possible Buddhist influence on early Christianity, including the New Testament with its four canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Derrett finds that recent research has “set up a case to be answered”, and his book is an attempt to do so (p. 17). The search for Max Müller´s “historical channels” can no longer be dismissed as irrelevant.

In the opinion of M. Fuss (op. rec., p. 2), there is an “eminent theological enrichment” which can be drawn “from an encounter between Christianity and Buddhism”. The Saddharmapundarîka (SDP) has been called the “Bible of Asia” and “the Eastern commentary on the Gospel of John” (p. 4), or even the New Testament of the East. The book is designed as a phenomenological and theological comparison of scriptural inspiration in the SDP and in the Christian tradition. Its author is inspired by the Vatican II teaching about the “seeds of the Word” in non-Christian religions.

An Introduction to the study of the SDP discusses the genre and the title of the SDP, its complex textual history, its canonicity, its language and its compilation (:interpolations, interdependence of gâthâs and prose, form-critical classification, and redaction analysis). This is followed by chapters on the Catholic teaching on Scriptural Inspiration (pp. 197-248), on elements for a Contemporary Reflection on Scriptural Inspiration (pp. 249-306), on the Inspiration of the SDP as paradigm for scriptural inspiration of non-Biblical scriptures (pp. 307-359).

The aim of the SDP, Fuss concludes (p. 358) is missionary proclamation(...) and thus similarity with the kerygmatic genre of the Christian Gospels. In its narratives it concentrates on the constitutional core of Buddhist religion: on the inspirational experience of the Buddha and his proclamation of the Eternal Dharma. The Lotus Sûtra becomes the concise embodiment of the achievement of enlightenment: the transcendent dynamism of the Supreme Dharma (p. 358).

The morale of this contribution to an inter-religious dialogue, then, is: Only a mutual openness in the common listening to the one “Word” of salvation beyond theoretical conceptions will orientate both scriptural traditions in “Spirited Life” towards the blissful and liberating experience of an IN-SPIRED DIA-LOGUE” (p. 359).

Appendix 1 (pp. 361-419) provides a survey, a classification of the manuscripts etc. having to do with the textual history of the SDP. Appendix 2 lists selected “Christian parallels to the SDP”, and finally documents concerning “Dei Verbum” are given as Appendix 3 (pp. 435-454). An extensive Bibliography, completed March 1983, concludes this learned book (pp. 455-479).

When it comes to the “intricate problem” of a presumed dependence of any of these Budddhist-Christian parallels, Fuss (p. 421, n. 1) simply refers to the statement of T.W.Rhys Davids in Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion (= The Hibbert Lectures 1881), London 1906, p. 151f: “ I can find no evidence whatever of any actual and direct communication of any of these ideas from the East to the West. Where the Gospel narratives resemble the Buddhist ones, they seem to me to have been independently developed on the shores of the Mediterranean and in the valley of the Ganges;...The similarities of idea are evidence not of any borrowing from one side or the other, but of similar feelings engendered in men´s mind by similar experiences.”

Klatt, of course, is right, and so is Derrett (p. 15) when writing that the only person to deal conclusively with the matter must not only be fluent in Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew etc., but he must also have a personality that will “charm and persuade the prejudiced and the indifferent”. “Unlike many gifted linguists we know, will he enter into original, and highly controversial work? Will he possess the stamina to sustain a great enterprise? To the first miracle a second miracle must be added.”

Zacharias P. Thundy, the author of Buddha and Christ. Nativity Stories and Indian Tradition, published two years after Fuss, also by Brill in Leiden, belong to the happy few who will not let themselves be deterred. Unlike Fuss et al., he does not dismiss the “intricate problem”. This attitude may have something to do with his Indian and Christian background, as he himself notes.

Thundy´s book is also a contribution to East-West dialogues, but, compared to Fuss, along entirely different lines. In his opinion, New Testament authors have written under Buddhist influence. He agrees with Schopenhauer and others, that “The New Testament must be in some way traceable to an Indian source” (p. 1). His book is, primarily, an exercise in comparative literature (p. 18). The Gospel of Matthew reflects a process of imitation-emulation (p. 31). A close look at the first two chapters of Luke reveals extensive use of revisionism, Thundy claims (p. 34). What we find in the exegesis of the NT writers is deconstructionist midrash (ibid., my emphasis), as can be seen e.g. by a close look at the OT parallels to Luke 1. What we see by comparing the parallel passages is that Luke used several books of the OT, but he did not just copy passages from OT; he rather “judiciously used words, phrases, sentences, and motifs to advance his views on the person and the details of the life of Jesus” (ibid., p. 37). This is “plagiarism” - even theft - in the sense that it is artistic adaptation of the words and ideas of another without crediting the source or presenting a new and original idea derived from an existing source (p. 43). Many Western Christians, Thundy observes, are unduly disturbed when it is suggested that the gospel writers may have borrowed literary motifs from the East (p. 44). Even though the gospel writers use unacknowledged Buddhist and other subtexts they do not appear to be doing so; this is because these writers make these subtexts as their own original text (p. 46).

In Thundy´s opinion, the Christian gospel writers did not use any particular version of the Buddha-story from beginning to end from a literary text, but rather at random and selectively from oral traditions (p. 79).

The juxtaposition of this long list of obvious parallels permits us to conclude that this is “more than a fortuitous convergence of universal fo(l)kloric motifs simply because nowhere else do we see such a convergence of literary motifs...”. Cum singula non prosunt, multa juvant, as Derrett (p. 113) would submit.

Thus Thundy´s main argument in support of his assertion consists in the cumulative evidence provided by a long list of convergent literary motifs. And, I may add, it is exactly this mass of cumulative evidence, easily to be enlarged, that serves to reject the scepticism of previous researchers such as Tuxen et al.

Furthermore, Thundy´s book contains some fine and well-written chapters on Gnosticism, The New Testament and India, and India and the West in Antiquity. They serve well to corroborate his point about the NT gospels as Eastern religious texts. I completely agree that Thundy´s analysis of the Infancy gospels shows that Indian influence was deep and pervasive, and that Christian writers must have been familiar, not just vaguely but thoroughly, with the Indian religions (p. 272). As he himself says, to be sure: “ I could do this kind of analytic work only within the liberal framework of modern literary criticism which endorses the metods of deconstructionism, intertextuality, and new historicism in comparative literary studies” (ibid.). Thundy, finally, admits that a distinction should be made between the literary and the theological approach: “ Doing violence to one diminishes the beauty and destroys the integrity of the other” (p. 271). Here, however, he may be wrong.

Not listed in the extensive Bibliography is the 1982 Literarkritische Beiträge of Klatt, mentioned above. Here, with even greater attention to the little details than Thundy, the German theologian comes to much the same conclusion as Thundy, though on a significantly smaller scale. Klatt mainly focused on the legend of Jesu und Buddhas Wasserwandel/Walking on the Water of Jesus and of Buddha - to quote the title of the booklet published privately by Klatt, Göttingen 1990. Here (p. 30), Klatt concluded his careful comparison with these words: “ It is quite impossible to explain the obvious concordance between the two stories which the analysis of structure demonstrates from the “nature” of things, for walking on water is contrary to the ordinary laws of nature. Nor can a psychological explanation account for the complex structure and the particularities of the story found to be common to the Buddhistic and the Christian tales. And thus we are lead to conclude that the only probable explanation for the astounding congruence which the structural analysis shows is that the story of the walking on the water found its way from one culture into another. And although we cannot determine unequivocally the original Buddhistic text, we may affirmatively state, based on the historical priority of the Buddhistic tale, as for example in the pre-Christian Pâli canon, that the direction of the borrowing is from the Buddhistic source into the Christian gospels.”

By way of “structural analysis”, Klatt came to a “probable explanation”, that, if true, would establish at least one small “historical channel”. But one channel would also render it likely that more could be found. Elmar R. Gruber and Holger Kersten cover much of the same ground as Thundy in their book The Original Jesus. The Buddhist Sources of Christianity, Shaftesbury, Dorset 1995. The first part deals with “India and the West”, the second with “Jesus - the Buddhist”, the third with “The Way of the Original Jesus”.

What the book is mainly concerned with is suggested by the mention of “Die Gesellschaft der Nazarener” established by Holger Kersten “so as to better co-ordinate and more meaningfully activate future research on the historical Jesus and his Buddhist-influenced teachings, and also to make findings accessible to those interested.” (p. vii)

The Bibliography (pp. 252-259) of this well-written book refers to the books of Klatt, Thundy etc., but not to that of Fuss. The authors conclude (p. 243): “Buddhist sources in Christianity can no longer be denied, even though they have been crushed under the theologically prescribed reworkings. What is more important though is the fact that this Buddhist material was originally disseminated by Jesus himself. That discovery adds a completely new dimension to the discussion of Buddhism in the New Testament: the true teachings of Jesus, his Buddhist teachings(...) Christianity - and even the Christian message - is completely different from what Jesus taught...”. To some extent Gruber & Kersten are right. About their thesis that “the historical Jesus” was a Buddhist, I am more than sceptical. Nearly everything said about Jesus in the gospels, can, in fact, according to my own investigations through the last five years be traced back to Buddhist sources. So what remains, and what do we know about “a historical Jesus”? About as much as we know of “the historical Little Mermaid”!

That “Jesus lived in India” - to quote the title of a much-publicized 1983/1986 book by Holger Kersten - is definitely wrong. Klatt has unravelled the confusions that let to this unhappy thesis in his - much neglected - booklet: Lebte Jesus in Indien? Eine religionsgeschichtliche Klärung, Göttingen 1988. It was not Jesus who (lived and) died in Kashmir, but Yus Asaf/Yudasaf/Bodhasaf = Bodhisattva, who, according to the legend, died in Kusinara; see also David M. Lang, The Wisdom of Balahvar, London 1957, pp. 129-130. Eventually, scholars will have to concede - in my opinion - that the “Jesus” of the gospels is a purely fictitious figure, like Donald Duck or Hercules - as already argued e.g. by the philosopher Arthur Drews (who seems to have remained unknown to all the authors here under review) in his excellent, though somewhat outdated, Die Christusmythe I-II, Jena 1910-11.

But, in spite of all this, more conservative spirits are still searching for “the historical Jesus”. Currently, some scholars speak of the “third quest” for Jesus. There seems to be something highly elusive about (- of all persons-) the Son of God, the Son of David ( both of which actually render San. deva-putra) - also known as ekeinos ho planos (Matthew 27:63, translating, in fact, San. pâpakâry asau, in Samghabhedavastu I, p. 26, q.v.) - For one of the many recent surveys, I may refer to Marcus Borg, Jezus: gezocht en onderzocht. De renaissance van het Jezusonderzoek, Zoetermeer 1998. In spite of the title - the English original from 1994 was: Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship - the author, typically, simply ignores the sort of comparative research that occupies us here. In the long run such arrogance is doomed to backfire. How can one find what one is looking for when neglecting the pertinent sources?

Buddhismus und Christentum. Geschichte, Konfrontation, Dialog is the title of an informative book of 805 pages written jointly by Michael von Brück and Whalen Lai, München 1997. (For a review, see Buddhist Studies Review 16/2 (1999)259-263) A second edition appeared 2000 as a cheap-priced Sonderausgabe at DM 48,-.

Referring mainly to R.C.Amore, Two Masters - One Message, Nashville 1978, and to the books of Thundy and Klatt (p. 680, n. 5), these two authors take the standpoint that: “Selbst wenn man Amores Textanalysen und Vergleichen zustimmen würde, ergäbe sich, dass der Einfluss des Buddhismus auf das Christentum marginal war und nicht die zentralen Inhalte der Botschaft Jesu betrifft” (p. 316). So, for these authors, as for Fuss et al., the Holy Sepulchre remains safe from comparative incursions , as it were. The Original Jesus, now rare, is not mentioned by Michael von Brück and Whalen Lai. Perhaps it appeared too late. In any case they would hardly have been prepared to subscribe to its thesis, for they are obviously what Derrett would call “minimalists”. As for the book of Amore, a title closer to the historical truth - as I see it - would have been: One Master - Two Messages; for the gospels are largely free and highly artificial translations of the Buddhist “subtexts” (to use Thundy´s term). “Jesus” is rather a Buddha in disguise - bad disguise.

J. Duncan M. Derrett is the learned author of The Bible and the Buddhists, published in Italy by Sardini Editrice, December 2000. The book is an important one, perhaps the most important of its kind to this day. I have written a long review article for Buddhist Studies Review 19/2(2001)1-14, to which I may perhaps refer the interested reader. My main objection to Derrett´s book has to do with one of his criteria for classifying parallels (p. 30). According to Derrett, we are asking too much if we require “close verbal similarity”. This conviction Derrett seems to share with virtually all previous researchers, even “maximalists” prepared to admit even more Buddhist influence in the NT than Derrett himself. One important exception to the rule, ignored by Derrett, is Edward Conze who already in 1959 called attention to “close verbal coincidences”: “...Occasionally we find close verbal coincidences between the Christian and the Mahâyâna Scriptures. Just one instance must suffice. At the time when the Revelation of St John was written down in Greek in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Mahâyânists produced in the South of Idia one of their most revered books, The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines. Revelation (v. 1) refers to a book “closely sealed” with seven seals, and likewise the Perfection of Wisdom is called a book “sealed with seven seals”. It is shown to a Bodhisattva by the name of “Everweeping” (Sadâpradrudita), and St John “weeps bitterly” (v. 4) because he sees no one worthy to open the book and to break its seals. This can be done by the Lamb alone, slaughtered in sacrifice (v. 9). In the same way, chapters 30 and 31 of the Mahâyâna book describe in detail how Everweeping slaughtered himself in sacrifice, and how he thereby became worthy of the Perfection of Wisdom (see pp. 302-3). This parallel is remarkable not only for the similarities of the religious logic, but also for the fact that both the number seven and the whole notion of a “book with seven seals” point to the Judaeo-Mediterranea rather than to the Indian tradition. Here is a fruitful field for futher study.” (R.C.Zaehner (ed.), Encyclopedia of the World´s Religions, London 1959, p. 293.)

On this issue, close verbal similarities, I disagree decisively with virtually all my predecessors - apart from Conze - in the field of CGS. For my reasons for doing so, I will have to confine myself to referring to my forthcoming papers and books in which numerous verbal similarities are pointed out. See, for instance, “Âmrapâli in the Gospels”, which has just come out in The Adyar Library Bulletin 64 (2000), 151-170. The gospels were largely translated according to the rules (middoth) of gematria, notarikon, neged etc., current among learned bilingual Jews in those days.

Derrett has a high opinion of Gruber´s and Kersten´s The Original Jesus: “This was a beautifully produced, thoughtful and scholarly culmination of a renewed trend to elevate Buddhism as the source of Christianity, to depict, in effect, Jesus as a student of the Buddha. These authors make mighty, impressive assumptions, while drawing attention to many relevant facts. They rightly point (p. 22) to the Mahâyâna as the form of Buddhism from which parallels can be expected. They rightly show that communication between India and the Middle East was far easier than we used to suppose...(Derrett, p. 16).

Among those who “used to suppose”, I may insert, Derrett himself is surely one of the most distinguished. His six volumes of New Testament Studies, published by Brill in Leiden between 1977 and 1995, are a mine of erudition with a wealth of new observations and suggestions for solving old problems pertaining to the text and interpretation of the gospels. Also, Derrett has many other books and articles to his credit. As a rule, they too have been totally - and unduly - neglected by New Testament scholars. But back to Gruber & Kersten, who, on the other hand, also “ignore factors as significant as their own. Buddhist borrowings from Greece and Israel have left them unmoved. They sometimes ask the wrong questions, and their sensational results could be vitiated by such flaws as those.” ( Derrett, p. 17)

In The Bible and the Buddhists (BB), Derrett argues 11 cases where the NT may have gained from Buddhist models, about 19 cases where Buddhists seem to have adopted NT material, some 11 cases where the literatures may have gained reciprocally, and finally 16 cases where it is impossible to claim that either influenced the other. I shall, as said, nor here repeat my critique of Derrett already advanced in my review article in the BSR (ref. supra). In my opinion, virtually all the parallels adduced by Derrett belong to the first category,i.e. where the NT depends on Buddhist sources. We must, as said, look for close verbal similarity to establish the historical relationship on a firm basis. Derrett´s basic idea, reasonable though it may appear, that a sort of collaboration between Buddhists and Christians took place; that they were entrepreneurs in the same line of business, as it were, and that they “put their heads together”, is, nevertheless, unhappy. In my view hardly one of the examples marshalled by my learned British colleague supports his point. And when it comes to the precise identity of the Buddhist sources, I differ decisively from all my predecessors. My claim is that the writers of the gospels copied directly, above all from the Sanskrit text of the Mûlasarvâstvâda-Vinaya (MSV) - including Catusparisatsûtra (CPS) and Mahâparinirvânasûtra (MPS) as well Samghabhedavastu (SBV). For the Gnoli edition of the Sanskrit text of the SBV, see my review in Acta Orientalia 43 (1983) 124-126.

By comparing these Sanskrit texts carefully with the Greek NT we shall be able to detect numerous cases of literal correspondence that conclusively serve to establish my thesis that the NT gospels are to a large extent direct - but also highly artificial - translations of the Sanskrit.

Even though Klatt occasionally came close to the proper method, and even though Thundy, Gruber & Kersten, and Derrett came to some correct conclusions, they unfortunately failed to insist on close verbal similarity to establish the historical dependence. Klatt, regrettably, failed to consider the evidence of the MSV.

More precisely this close verbal similarity on which I insist as the main - but far from sole - criterion, has to do with the numerical literary techniques used by all the writers of the gospels. Now this may come as a surprise to many, even NT scholars, but the fact is that the trans-lations directly from Sanskrit to Greek (leaving no room for a hypothetical intermediate Aramaic source) in numerous cases were done on the basis of a computation of the numerical value of words, or names - a well-known practice in antiquity, in Jewish literature known as gematria (Hebrew: gymtry´, imitating Gr. geômetria and possibly also, with typical ambiguity, grammateia . In Greek we have the technical term isopsêphos, “equal in numerical value”, Latin conpar.

In an highly significant monograph, Numerical literary techniques in John, Leiden 1985, M.J.J.Menken has analysed the composition of selected passages from John (viz. 1:19-2:11; 5; 6; 9:1-10:21;17), coming to the firm conclusion that “the author of the Fourth Gospel made use of numbers of syllables and words” (op. cit., p. 269). Previously, the employment of this quantitative technique had been pointed out by J. Smit Sibinga in a communication to the Journées Bibliques, of Louvain in 1970, where he discussed “a literary technique in the Gospel of Matthew”. Investigating a series of Matthean passages, J. Smit Sibinga has convincingly established that the author of the First Gospel has “arranged his text in such a way, that the size of the individual selections is fixed by a determined number of syllables. The individual parts of a sentence, the sentences themselves, sections of a smaller or larger size, they are, all of them, characterized in a purely quantitative way by their number of syllables” (Menken, op. laud., p. 21).

Now, this technique of making two members of a period equal in length was already known to Aristotle as parisôsis. Alexander, in his second century C.E. De figuris, speaks of parison (= isokolon): parison estin hotan duo ê pleiona kôla synenôthenta malista men kai tas syllabas isas ekhê, alla ge kai ton arithmon ton ison en pasi lambanê:” “There is a parison, when two or more united cola have above all their syllables equal, but obtain also in all their parts equal rythm...”. The Latin term is conpar, defined by the Rhetorica ad Herennium 4,20,27 thus: conpar appellatur quod habet in se membra orationis...quae constent ex pari fere numero syllabarum (Menken, p. 15). These members that consists of an almost equal number of syllables bring us to the heart of the matter.

Let me repeat that the numerical analysis of J. Smit Sibinga and M.J.J.Menken et al. (in Scandinavia: Birger Gerhardsson, Jesu liknelser, Lund 1999, passim) has established beyond any doubt that the writers of the NT gospels made extensive use of syllables and words in the composition of their works.

Now, again and again, when comparing the Sanskrit and the Greek, we cannot fail to observe the principle of conpar, of gematria, being at work. This is an objective fact, something that can be counted and measured. It is quantitative. It is, I repeat, an objective fact that can be verified by any scholar of Sanskrit and Greek willing to see for himself: ehipasyika, a technical Buddhist term, is translated by the most cunning of the evangelists, John 1:46: erkhou kai ide. The authors of the four gospels often reproduced precisely not only the number of the syllables and words of the Sanskrit, but, what is more, even the sense, the word classes, and the sound patterns of the original. Just one example: John 10:1-18 the Pastor bonus, is a gematria translation of the celebrated mrgapatih legend MPS 40d: 40-51 (ed. E. Waldschmidt,pp. 476-478). The number of syllables is the same in both sources (namely 604), and an amazing number of the original consonant have likewise been reproduced in the Greek. The sense is thus automatically distorted, as when San. parvata, mountain, becomes Greek probata, sheep, etc. Now we understand how naïve it has been of us to ask for a simlilarity of ideas to establish a possible historical relationship. The evangelists often pay more attention to similarity of sound than to similarity of ideas. What we should ask for, is primarily: similarity of syllables, of consonants, of words, and of numbers. Once we are aware of conpar and gematria we have also - finally - identified of one the major “historical channels” that Max Müller and many other scholars had been searching for so long without success. If one text speaks of mountains, and another of sheep, we see no similarity. But when we see that parvata has become probata, only then the identity is seen.

The modern reader may remain sceptical when he reads these words, but let me remind him of the “translation” of LXX done by Aquila. As we can see from the remaining fragments it was often merely a matter of playing on words (see Natalio Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context, Leiden 2000, pp. 116-117 for a list of amusing examples, exactly like those of the evangelists).

In passing it may be mentioned that B. Scherer has just published a German translation of “Der gute Herdenführer”, in his Buddha, Gütersloh 2001, pp. 92-94. Commenting on the nativity legend, the young German scholar observes (p. 86):”Es ist durchaus möglich, dass diese buddhistischen Motive von den frühen Christen für Jesus von Nazereth übernommen und angepasst wurden”.

Returning to Fuss and Derrett, it is quite true that the evidence of the SDP - apart from that of the MSV - also “turns out to be crucial for our quest” (Derrett, p. 15). No fully satisfactory edition of the sûtra exists. Some portions seem to be older than others. The text may have grown. Fuss criticized Kern´s well-known translation etc.

Fuss, it will be recalled, was not inclined to descend from his venture of phenomenological and theological comparison down to the solid ground of philology and literary criticism. Should it turn out that the writers of the gospels borrowed some of their materials from the SDP - what , then, would become of Dei Verbum? A more appropriate title of his book, then, would be: Buddhavacanam alias Dei Verbum. If the NT depends on the SDP, then it is hardly Buddhism that might participate in the seed of the Biblical Verbum Dei, but rather vice versa. The Word of God would then be reduced to the words of the translators. Or Deus would be a Lord of gematria. Is this not blas-phêmia? Well, at least pari-bhâsâ, or (SDP) pari-bhâsana! It makes a world of difference whether one takes a phenomenological-theological or a philological-historical approach to this issue. The former surely presupposes the latter.

Let me conclude by drawing attention to one or two significant parallels that emerge when one compares the SDP with the gospels. The first serves to establish the priority of the SDP. It is generally agreed that there is a close relationship between SDP XIV and Matthew 27: 51-52, but opinions are divided as to which source has the priority (Derrett, op. cit., p. 74 et passim).In Kern´s edition of the Sanskrit p. 309 we find the phrase adhastâd âkâsadhâtu-. This I claim, is rendered by Matthew 27:51 as anôthen heôs katô eis duo. First, the adhastât, downwards, is rendered precisely by the synonym anôthen reproducing the sense, form and number of syllables of the original. The following word, âkâsa, is then artificially split up, as if â + kâsa, giving us ewV as a correct translation of San. â-, until. As for the rest of the phrase, the four consonants in the Greek, viz. k-t-s and d (i.e. a guttural, two dentals and a sibilant), they faithfully reproduce the guttural, the two dentals and the sibilant of the Sanskrit. And this sort of “translation” is not at all uncommon. It is, in fact, quite typical of the sort of translation seen in all the gospels. By way of anagram, the sense has been changed. So âkâsa-dhâtu is rendered twice, so to speak. Its five syllables are preserved in the three Greek words: heôs katô eis duo. The translation, it can be argued, is “formally” correct, but the original sense is surely distorted. This sort of translation may appear odd or absurd to us, but is was (and is) typical of rabbinic hermenutics (see e.g. Hermann L. Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, New York 1959, pp. 93-98). It being inconceivable that the Sanskrit âkâsadhâtu in this case should have been based on the Greek heôs katô eis duo, this small example serves to establish the priority of the Sanskrit, i.e. the SDP.

A second example shows that Matthew can also be faithful to the sense of of the SDP - and it also serves to reject Derrett´s view that the infulence from Buddhism did not concern doctrine, but only presentation (Derrett, p. 97). In SDP II we read that Sâri-Pûtras first had some doubts about the Dharma etc. Then the Buddha asks him to give up all doubt and uncertainty, presenting himself as the King of Dharma. He then adds: “Let this mystery be for thee, Sâri-Putra, for all disciples of mine, and for the eminent Bodhisattvas, who are to keep this mystery.” (III,138-139). In SDP, Sâri-Pûtra(s) expresses his doubts about the true identity of the Buddha. Is he perhaps Mâra? In reply, the Buddha promises that Sâri-Pûtras shall be the most excellent of men, so unsurpassed (III,32). Also, in SDP, II, 61 Sâri-Pûtras is addressed by the Buddha as Sâri-suta, and, passim, as Jina-putra.

Once these passages are kept in mind, it is easy to recognize one of the main sources for the celebrated confession of Peter, Matthew 16:13-20. Sâri-Pûtras has become Simon Petros. The mystery of the King of Dharma has become the mystery of the the Christ - the king who was never anointed. Jina-putra becomes Bar-iwna, Son (putra) of Jona (jina), Matthew 16:17 only. So even the motive of making puns on the name of the chief disciple is inherited from the Buddhist source.

And Simon? There are many Simons in the NT. What is the original Sanskrit behind Simon? A clue is given when John 21:7 very oddly writes Simôn oun Petros. How are we to explain the a proper name is split up by an oun? This odd phenomenon suggests that Simon is not part of a proper name but rather a title of some sort. Behind Simon, I suggest, we find Sanskrit âyusman. All the original consonants (s-m-n) are preserved, the semivowel y having been left out. Another frequent translation of âyusmân we find when Jesus identifies himself with zôê, as is often the case. It is hard to understand how Jesus “is life”, but easy to grasp that he is considered âyusmân. The solution to the secret that W. Wrede (Das Messiasgeheimniss in den Evangelien, 1901) et al. have written so much about, therefore, finds its simple solution in SDP.

The words put into the mouth of Jesus by Matthew, however, are not to be found in the SDP. But they often occur in other Buddhists texts, as I shall point out in my forthcoming monograph on the Buddhist sources of Matthew. Let me conclude this review article by pointing out the source of John 7:38, which as Derrett (p.41) says, as part of John 7:37-44, “is largely incoherent as well as repugnant”. The syntax is obscure. It is not obvious that the autouautou is to be taken with ho pisteuôn eis eme. The insertion of the kathôs eipen hê graphê makes it unlikely. The Sanskrit is Samghabhedavastu I, p. 25: asya... dvau sukrabindû sarudhire nipatitau. John 19:34 plays on the same words: kai exêlthen euthus haima kai hydôr... It is also the source of Luke 22:44:kai egeneto ho hidrôs autou hôsei thrombai haimatos katabainontes epi tên gên. The reader can also easily recognize Mark 15:21: Aleksandrou kai Rouphou as an imitation of the sound, syllables and/or sense of San. sukrabindû sa-rudhire. Matthew 27:25 also comes close:to haima autou eph´ hêmas kai epi ta tekna hêmôn. And when one finally compares Samghabhedavastu I, pp. 21- 26 as a whole with Matthew 26-28 par, there cannot remain much doubt that for the words and motives the legend of Gautama who was put on a stake (sûle samâropita) served as a major source of the celebrated Passion Narrative.

Derrett´s six volumes of New Testament Studies display his wonderful command of the ancient Jewish sources. They should be constantly consulted by the student of The Bible and the Buddhists. Repeatedly Derrett succeeds in throwing new light on old problems in the gospels thanks to his familarity with these sources. The same goes for his other books, such as The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as an Historical Event, 1982; The Making of Mark I-II, 1985; New Resolutions of Old Conundrums. A Fresh Insight into Luke´s Gospel, 1986; The Victim. The Johannine Passion Narrative Reexamined, 1993, and Some Telltale Words in The New Testament, 1997 - all published by and still available from Peter I. Drinkwater, 56 Church Street, Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, England. It is a great pity that these learned volumes are so little known among theologians. But it is also surprising how often Derrett finds the wrong solutions to familiar problems in Jewish sources where the right ones are to be found in the Buddhist sources. It is indeed his constant contention that New Testament material cannot be understood without the cultural and intellectual environment of the people amongst whom it emerged. That this environment was largely Jewish cannot be denied.

Derrett claims to be a detective who does not care where evidence leads him. That sounds good. That may be so. But Derrett is a naïve detective, for he never raises the question of the seriousness of the gospels. Where is the proof that the evangelists were serious and trustworty witnessess to the events they pretend to be describing? If they translated from the Sanskrit as Aquila translated from the Hebrew - how can they be considered serious authors? Just one proof!